


When You're Broken

by ArtemisRayne



Category: Glee
Genre: Angst, Bullying, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, POV Alternating, Triggers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-18
Updated: 2010-01-18
Packaged: 2017-12-05 05:47:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 23
Words: 57,736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/719560
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArtemisRayne/pseuds/ArtemisRayne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is a series of oneshots through Artie and Tina's relationship, of all the different times that one of them has broken down and the other has been there to fix them. Mostly angst and hurt/comfort, but there will definitely be continuous undercurrents of friendship and romance.  It starts pre-series and will progress way beyond high school.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Introductions

The first time I found Tina Cohen-Chang broken, I didn't even know that was her name.

At the time I didn't know anything about her. I had never seen her before, even though I'd heard the rumours that there was a new girl in school, a creepy Gothic freak who didn't talk much. I shrugged aside the news, because honestly why should I care that someone else had moved into this town and would most likely end up brushing aside the kid in the wheelchair just like everyone else does? So I ignored all of the gossip churning through the building and went through my classes like I do every day.

At lunch I dug my paper bag out of my backpack as usual and then rolled out into the hall outside the cafeteria. I generally avoid eating in there, because the big milling crowd of people makes it that much more likely I'll take a backpack to the face or have a lunch tray dropped on me. Just as I was about to park myself in an open alcove, I heard a faint noise coming from around the corner. Curious, I went around the corner and saw a crouched figure dressed in black. A girl, I judged by the length of the hair and the fact she was wearing a skirt, and she seemed to be crying.

Feeling extremely awkward, since I had zero experience with crying girls apart from when my little sister skinned her knees, I ventured a tentative, "Hey, are you okay?"

The girl jumped and turned to face me. She was a pretty Asian girl I'd never seen before, with dark slanting eyes and soft, coppery skin. Her black hair was draped around her face in sheets, half hiding it, and there were streaks of bright blue in it that matched the bits of blue that were the only colour in her otherwise black wardrobe. The make-up around her eyes had smeared and I watched as she hastily wiped at the mascara on her cheeks with the backs of her fishnet-clad hands.

"F-f-fine," she sputtered out in such a quiet voice that I could barely hear her. "I j-just – No, I'm n-n-not fine," she changed tact midway through her sentence and I saw her chin start to quiver. "I h-had just g-gotten comfortable in m-m-m-my old school, and th-then my parents m-made us p-pick up and move here. And everyone is s-staring at me and t-t-talking about me because of th-this stupid st-t-tutter, and I j-just wish they'd s-s-stop."

She buried her face in her hands again and all I could do was stare at her. When I'd asked if she was okay, I really wasn't expecting to hear all of that. Still, I felt bad for her, because I sort of knew how she felt. I could still remember the way it had been when I'd finally come back from the hospital after being paralysed, and the way everyone treated me it felt like I was a new kid in school too. So I rolled closer to her and leaned over to pat her shoulder lightly.

The girl flinched away from my touch at first, like she thought I was going to hit her, but after a second she relaxed and even leaned sideways against the wheel of my chair. After a minute or so her crying calmed down and she wiped her hands over her face one more time before looking up at me.

"S-s-sorry, I d-didn't mean to just r-r-r-ramble at you like th-that," she said, still in an insanely low voice. "You p-probably didn't w-want to know all that."

"No, it was no problem," I said because it just seemed like the right thing to say. While I really wasn't expecting for her to completely unload on me like that, since most people generally avoid talking to me at all, it didn't actually bother me. And then, because we were both looking awkward, I panicked and did the first thing that came to mind. Digging into the paper sack in my lap, I pulled out a Ziploc bag and offered it out to her. "Cookie?"

The girl stared at the bag for a moment and then she smiled. It was soft and small, just like her voice, but it was a real smile and I couldn't help but smile too. "Th-thanks," she said, taking one out of the bag.

All of the tension between us melted away as she took a curious bite of the cookie and then smiled again. "My name's Artie," I said, holding out a hand to her.

The girl regarded my hand just as curious as she had the cookies, and I realised belatedly that I was still wearing my gloves, but she just gave me another quiet smile and slipped one of her fishnet gloved hands into mine. "T-t-tina," she replied.

"Nice to meet you," I said. I pulled everything out of my lunch bag and laid it out on my lap and then looked down at her questioningly. "Wanna go half-sies? My mum always packs too much for me to eat." Tina smiled and nodded, and a minute later we were both munching down on halves of peanut butter and honey sandwiches and the rest of my cookies. She sat leaning up against the side of my chair like it didn't bother her in the slightest, and the longer we talked the less I noticed her stutter. She told me about how her family had moved around a lot, and I told her about what life was like in Lima.

When the bell rang at the end of the lunch period, Tina stood up and grabbed her bag off the floor, slinging it over her shoulder. "Do you need a hand finding your next class?" I asked hopefully. Honestly, I didn't want to have to leave her, because she was the first person in a long time to treat me like a normal person.

Tina smiled gratefully. "Th-that would be great," she said and dug her schedule out of her bag. When she handed it to me, my eyes panned down until I found the right class hour and then I couldn't stop my face from lighting up. "Science with Mr. Kilpatrick, that's my class," I told her. She beamed.

We headed for class together, still chatting idly about nothing important, and I noticed that we were drawing a lot of stares from the other students. Tina seemed to shrink a little at the attention, but I just smiled at her and pulled her into another topic to keep her distracted. If there was one thing to avoid when you're the new kid, it was letting the constant staring bog you down.

When we got to class, I went back to my seat while Tina went up to give her papers to the teacher. Once Mr. Kilpatrick had nodded, she hurried back and slipped into the seat beside me, one that had been determinedly empty for the early half of the term. "I'm g-going to be so l-l-lost in this class," she said to me mournfully. "I'm awful at s-s-science."

"Don't worry about it, I'm pretty good at it, I'll help you study," I told her and then the doubt had sunk in. Was I overstepping bounds? Did she even want help from me? But Tina had smiled at me again.

"Th-th-thanks, Artie," she said and the weight behind her words told me it was for a whole lot more than science lessons or an escort to class or even half my sandwich and chocolate chip cookies. I just smiled back.

That was the first time I'd found Tina Cohen-Chang broken, and the first time I fixed her.


	2. Kryptonite

The first time I saw Artie Abrams broken was back in that time when I was still convinced that he was invincible.

By this point we had been best friends for a year and a half, and they were some of the best times of my life. I loved the friendship we had, one comprised of two people shunned aside by the world and coming together over our differences. Since the first day, Artie had looked right past my stutter, the one that drove so many others away, and I had known instantly that he was someone I wanted as a friend. That he was someone I could trust not to hurt me like the other people I'd let get close to me had. His eternal optimism kept me strong when things were hard, and after seeing him survive so many things and still smile, I thought he was nothing short of superman.

On that particular day, I had to stay late after school to make up a test I'd missed in my maths class. My teacher had forgotten so I had to wait an extra half hour for him to find the right papers and go make copies of it so I could take it, and then the test itself took me nearly the entire allotted hour. My brain felt like a wrung sponge when I finally put down my pencil, and all I could think was damn my parents for making me take this class, and thank god for Artie and his tutoring or there was no way I would survive.

After my teacher finally let me go, (he insisted on grading my paper right then and making me wait until he was finished so he could tell me how I'd done), I went to my locker, grabbed all of my things, and then breathed a sigh of relief. Finally, nearly two hours late, I was allowed to actually leave the school and go home.

When I got to the doors of the school, I looked outside and groaned. There were grey clouds covering every visible inch of sky, making it prematurely dark outside, and there was a wind that I could tell already would be freezing cold since it was still early March. As I zipped up my jacket and stepped outside, I could smell rain coming. I hated storms, and had been afraid of lightning for most of my life. Instantly I picked up my pace, wanting to get home and call Artie to see if I could come over, so I wouldn't have to be in my big, empty house alone when the storm hit. They weren't quite as scary when he was distracting me.

I was halfway up the walk in front of the school when I happened to catch a noise on the wind. I couldn't explain exactly what the noise sounded like; it was sort of a cross between a scream and a sob and a whimper, all kind of strained and muffled like it was underwater. I stopped and looked around for the source of the noise.

There was a figure standing in front of the flagpole, but the face was so hidden I couldn't see who it was. I wondered why on earth anyone would be standing around in this sort of cold, but something didn't feel right so I took a few steps closer. Whoever it was wasn't moving, leaning against the pole with their arms over their head. And they were also wearing a short-sleeved shirt, which seemed like ridiculous clothing for standing outside in early spring.

I noticed a strange pattern on the shirt; broad, uneven lines of greyish silver around the chest and stomach. Then I saw similar ones around the bared forearms, and the thighs of the jeans and just above the feet, which I only just realised weren't actually touching the ground. There was also a whole mess of the grey on the hands, which were clasped together, and then finally I saw that it was half covering the person's face too; thick bands of it circling their head, over the mouth and over the eyes. My heart plummeted into my feet as the unbelievable truth finally hit me.

Duct tape.

I raced over to the figure, dropping my bag and whipping out my house key on the way. It wasn't until I was only three feet away from the person that I recognised him.  _Artie_. I hadn't been able to tell, with half of his face hidden and the dim light of the oncoming storm, but there was no mistaking that piano keys belt. That was my best friend duct taped to a flag pole in the cold.

Without hesitation, I instantly started attacking the tape holding his legs to the pole with my key. It was slow work, because my hands were shaking so badly I kept losing my grip, but above me I could hear Artie making those whimpering sobbing screams, muffled by the tape, and it spurred me on faster.

Once I'd cut away the tape around his ankles and legs, I moved up to the ring around his waist. When my hand touched his side I heard him make a louder noise and I could actually see every muscle in his upper body tense. It only just occurred to me that he hadn't even noticed me freeing his legs, and had had no idea I was even here until I had put my hand against his side.

"Artie, calm down, it's just me," I said firmly, despite the fact that I was shaking. He didn't seem to react, and when I looked up at his face I noticed why. The ring of tape over his eyes was covering his ears as well. I touched his stomach once, lightly, gently, letting him know I wasn't going to hurt him (he flinched anyway), and then turned my focus back to the tape. I slashed through the ring around his waist, and then through the one just below his shoulders.

His body was slumping against mine as I reached up and started cutting through the tape on his arms. I could feel his muscles flexing against me, presumably trying to get away, but I just threaded one arm around him, holding him securely against me, while my other hand worked at the tape.

The moment the tape broke, his full weight fell against me and we both tumbled down onto the pavement. Artie tried to roll himself away from me, but I grabbed his arms to hold them still and started unwrapping the tape that had been holding his hands together. I noticed that his fingertips were vaguely purple and panic set it when I began wondering just how long he'd been like that.

"Artie, please, just calm down," I pleaded as loudly as I could but either he couldn't or wouldn't hear me. The moment his hands were free, he swung his arms at me. One of them caught me in the shoulder, undoubtedly leaving a bruise as it nearly knocked me over, but I grabbed the other one before it could find my face. Doing the first thing I could think of to let him know it was me, I seized the glove on his hand and tugged it off, and then placed my palm against his, letting him feel the fishnet gloves I always wear and slipping my fingers between his.

Artie froze, stiffened, and then all at once his arms were around me, nearly pulling me down on top of him. I hugged him back as he cling to me, pulling himself closer to me and burying his face in my neck. The duct tape was still on his eyes and mouth, cold and slick against my skin, but I couldn't draw away from him enough to get a hold on it so I could take it off. The breaths coming through his nose were fast, staccato and uneven. He was clinging onto me so tightly it almost hurt, and I felt his body quivering against mine. At first I thought it was the cold, until I noticed that the strange choked noises he'd been making had redoubled.

He was crying.

I tightened my grip around him, all but pulling him onto my lap to keep him closer, and I let one of my hands rub up and down his back. The wind was still whipping around us, Artie was still blind, deaf, and mute to the world, and I was feeling more scared and shaken then I ever had before, but I did everything I could to comfort him because I could tell that how terrified I felt was nothing on how he was feeling.

It felt like it must have been hours later when Artie finally pulled one hand away from me and started scratching at the tape on his face. I pushed him away from me slightly so I could get a good look and finally found the edge of the tape, digging my fingernails in under it and carefully unwrapping the band of it around his eyes. I felt him wince as it came to the final layer that was actually in contact with his skin, and I closed my own eyes as I pulled it away from his, not wanting to see what that must look like.

After I balled up the tape and tossed it away, I finally met his gaze. I could honestly say I had never seen so much fear before in my life as I did in those blue eyes. I knew he must be crying because I could still hear the catch in his breathing, but it was apparently beyond tears because his cheeks stayed dry. It was only then that I realised his glasses were missing, so it was a good thing we were so close or he probably wouldn't have been able to see me.

"It's ok-kay, Artie," I said quietly, soothingly, now that he could actually hear me. I had been neglecting my stutter before, but now it came out without my meaning it too, coming entirely from the fear I was feeling. "Y-you're okay now, it'll b-b-be okay."

Artie's hand moved to the tape on his mouth and I quickly helped him get that off as well. It left his skin red and raw, but he took in an overcompensating breath and when he exhaled it came out as a sob. I just pulled him into my arms again and he gratefully sank into my embrace, which was enough to tell me how serious this was. He was proud and independent, and he'd never even let me see him get bothered by something before. Now he was too scared to care. Turns out, every superman has a kryptonite.

He was muttering into my shoulder, and I could only catch a few words of it. I wasn't sure if he was even trying to make full sentences or just saying whichever words came to his mind at that second. "The dark… couldn't move… jumped me… trapped… cold… I can't… Tee… dark… alone… hospitals… scared…"

"It's okay, Artie," I said. "You're safe now." At that point in time I didn't really know what it was that had had him so freaked out. I had a lot of theories, but nothing I was sure about. Eventually down the road he told me what had happened. He'd been waiting for me, so we could walk home together, when a bunch of high schoolers jumped him. He'd had things like this happen to him before, but he confessed that he had a massive fear of dark, cramped places, and places where he couldn't move, because they reminded him of waking up in the hospital alone in the dark after he'd been paralysed, and being completely incapable of any kind of movement because of the way they'd strapped him so he didn't hurt himself worse. He hated the helplessness of it. Being blinded and deafened, unable to do anything to move, let alone free himself, had driven him nearly to the breaking point.

But at this point in time, I hadn't known that. All I'd known was that my best friend was terrified and he needed me.

"C'mon, Artie, let's get you home before we freeze," I said. It took a little convincing before I finally managed to get him to let me go, and then a few minutes searching before I found his chair upturned several yards away.

I stripped off my jacket and wrapped it around Artie, and it was a testament to out of it he was that he didn't start arguing with me about it. Then once we got him safely settled into his chair again, I gathered up my backpack and started us for his house. Artie just sat there, slightly hunched over and pulling my jacket tightly around himself.

His parents unfortunately weren't home yet either when we got there. I'd been hoping they might know how to help Artie. Thankfully his little sister was gone too, because I can only imagine the hassle she would have been and I was positive none of that would be good for Artie. So, left on my own to deal with the problem, I did the only thing I could think of and pushed him into his room.

"Alright, Artie, bedtime," I said gently. He obligingly pulled himself over onto the bed. I pulled off his shoes and then pulled the blankets over the top of him, tucking him in snugly and praying it helped him warm up. His bare forearms still felt too cold for my liking.

With this done, I hesitated, not sure exactly what to do with myself now. Artie was just lying there, staring up at the ceiling with half-lidded eyes, and he didn't even seem to register that I was still there. I contemplated going to consult the list of emergency phone numbers on the fridge to find his parents' cell phone numbers and let them know what had happened, but the moment I started moving off the bed a hand flew out and latched onto my arm.

"Tee." It was the first lucid thing he'd said yet and I turned to look at him. His eyes were on me but I knew he couldn't actually see me since I hadn't ever found his glasses. "Don't go."

"Okay." I climbed back onto the bed and came up to sit beside him. Artie went back to staring at the ceiling, his eyes slightly vacant and distant. I began wondering if he was going to say anything more or if I should just stay here until either his parents got home or he fell asleep. As I heard the rain begin to tap lightly against the window, I reasoned that at least I wouldn't have to be home alone during the storm.

Artie's stony silence was starting to scare me just as badly as his panic had. There was no familiar smile in his face or brightness in his eyes, and he simply frowned up at the ceiling, his hands folded over his chest loosely like they do at funerals. It wasn't a comforting comparison. So, determined to get a reaction out of him, I fell back on our shared hobby and passion: music.

" _When I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Mary comes to me, speaking words of wisdom, let it be…"_

Out of the corner of my eye I saw something spark into life in his eyes. I just kept singing under my breath, Artie's favourite song, and when the lyrics ran out I just hummed the tune. He still didn't show any real reaction other than the sudden attentiveness in his eyes, but I didn't stop and kept hoping that I could bring him back. I let my eyes close and leaned my head back against the wall, listening to the storm growing outside and the silence stretching on in the room, despite my humming.

"Thank you."

Artie's abrupt statement cut across my humming and I blinked in surprise, looking down at him. His eyes were closed, but his hand, the one missing the glove that I only just realised I'd left at the school somewhere, was reaching out for me. I pulled off one of my gloves too and slipped my hand into his. I saw a tear slip out from under his lashes, but neither of us said anything more and eventually he fell asleep.

That was the first time I'd seen Artie Abrams broken, and the first time I saved him.


	3. Protection

The next time I found Tina broken was the first time in my life I considered physically hurting another human being.

It was early in our freshman year of high school, and while the schools had changed, everything else was the same. We were still the bottom of the social heap, the cripple and the stutterer, and we remained a tight team in face of everything we took from our fellow students. On top of all the tortures they had previously inflicted on us, high school contained one new surprise for us in the form of puréed ice and brightly coloured, high fructose corn syrup. The slushie.

Our only sanctuaries were in each other. While the rest of the student body, except for the few people who were in the same boat as us, looked down on us and doused us in weekly slushies, we always turned to each other for a helping hand. We became inseparable, even more so than we had been before. We spent our lunches together out in the hall, trading food and listening to music together, and nearly every afternoon found her at my house up until the moment she had to go home for dinner, occasionally later. The next morning we'd meet up again at our usual street corner to walk to school together.

We were each other's constants. That one piece that was always there whenever everything else seemed crazy. I knew there had been enough times over the two years we'd been friends when she'd been there for me on those bad days when I couldn't fight against the mindsets my paralysis forced on me, and I was always there when the rumours the Cheerios spread about her actually hit a chink in her armour.

It was after midnight and I was having a hard time sleeping. It was a Friday night and while procrastinating on studying for our science mid-term, Tina and I had downed a lot too much sugar. While I wasn't in quite the sugar buzzed mode anymore, I still couldn't get my brain to shut off.

A weird sort of noise outside my window made me bolt upright. I couldn't tell what it was, just that it was some kind of quiet moan. Carefully, I slid myself off the bed and into my chair, never taking my eyes off the curtained window. As I crossed the room I couldn't help but think this is exactly how the stupid blonde bimbo in every horror movie dies; she hears the creepy noise and goes to investigate. Great, I was the blonde bimbo. Or maybe I was just the nerd that watched way too many movies.

I took a steadying breath and then grasped the curtain and tugged it aside. I had to hastily put a hand over my mouth to stop myself from shouting in surprise, because there was a hunched figure standing just a few feet from the window, just a shadow in the night. I squinted against the darkness, wishing I'd turned on my bedroom light, and noticed there was a faint bluish light hovering in front of the figure. A cell phone screen. The light landed on a sheet of black and blue hair and I felt my heart jump up into my throat.

When I pushed the window upward, the noise apparently finally made her realise I was awake. "Tee, that you?" I whispered.

The cell phone light vanished into a pocket and she came closer to the window, her head bowed and her arms wrapped protectively around herself. A weight dropped into my stomach because I recognised this pose. She was upset. Well, hell, of course she must have been to randomly appear outside my window in the middle of the night. Either that or she'd suddenly developed stalker/serial killer tendencies that I needed to be worried about.

"D-d-did I w-wake y-y-you?" she asked and I was surprised to hear that her voice sounded exactly like it had when we'd first met; shy, afraid, and like she'd been crying. Not to mention she was stuttering about ten times worse than usual, a sure sign she was nervous.

"Nah, I was already awake," I told her. "What are you doing out there?"

"I w-was trying to g-g-get up the n-nerve to c-c-call," she admitted. Her voice was growing thicker with every word and I could almost hear the tears welling up in her eyes.

"Come in here," I said. "It's freezing out there." I rolled back and Tina climbed in through the window. Once she was inside, I shut the window and turned to look at her. She was still standing hunched in, like she was trying to fold in on herself, and her head was bent so I couldn't see her face through her hair. "Tee?"

She didn't answer me. I went over to the bed, hauling myself onto it, and when I patted the spot beside me she crossed the room carefully. She toed out of her trainers and slipped up next to me while I flipped on the bedside lamp. Her legs instantly tucked up against her chest (I worked very hard not to look at that because she was wearing a skirt as usual) and she wrapped her arms around them, nestling her face into her knees. I'd seen this before, although never this badly; she was withdrawing, retreating in on herself.

"Tee," I tried again, reaching over to put a hand on her shoulder. She flinched away from the touch, another thing she hadn't done in a while, and I heard a shuddery sob escape her. I instantly placed it as the noise I'd heard outside the window. She was crying - again. "Tee, what happened?"

She finally looked up at me and the hand I'd been resting on her shoulder instinctively fisted. I had to lock my jaw to stop the curse words that came to mind from jumping out. Because there, shining against the coppery skin of her cheek, was a brilliantly red handprint.

"Oh my God, Tee," I finally breathed. Her expression collapsed and she crumbled into my arms, sobbing. I threaded my arms around her, rubbing circles at the base of her neck with one hand and trying to keep myself calm. She needed me to be the calm one, so I couldn't afford to let myself get worked up.

Between the crying and the stutter, it was nearly impossible to understand what she was saying into my chest, but I heard enough to get the gist of it. I knew already that her parents were extremely hard on her. They were hardly ever home because of their work, but when they were she heard non-stop interrogations about her grades and her extra-curriculars and things like that. They constantly berated her for not being more outgoing and joining more academic groups and making more of an effort to make herself a better candidate for a college. They already had her life planned out for her, and if she ever tried to tell them that wasn't what she wanted they got furious with her.

This time it seemed her father had found out she hadn't even tried for the Honour Society, like he'd told her. She'd talked back, told him she didn't want to follow the plans he'd set out for her, told him she was sick of her life being run by people who didn't even care about her. He'd pulled the 'accidental child' card on her, which I felt was a low blow in any situation no matter how true it may be, and told her that since they'd kept her and raised her that she owed them the decency to be obedient. She said something along the lines of wishing they hadn't kept her then, and by the way her voice trailed off mid-sentence, that must have been when he'd hit her.

I couldn't stop my blood from boiling. I didn't get angry often, but there were a few things in the world that I had no tolerance for. Hitting a girl and parents hitting their kids would be two of those things, and add to that the fact that the girl was my best friend, I was getting to the 'three strikes you're out' point.

"I'm s-s-s-sorry," Tina choked into my shirt. "I d-d-didn't w-want to b-bother you, b-but – "

"No, shh, don't worry about it, Tee," I assured her, pulling her closer. "You never have to worry about it. I'm glad you came to me."

Tina tightened her grip on my tee-shirt, slipping into my lap and burying her face further into my collar. "I've s-s-seen him m-mad before, b-but he's n-n-n-never – never act-t-tually – "

"It's okay, Tee, you're okay now," I said, trying to channel out the anger I was feeling by rubbing her back again. My only relief was that at least this was the first time. I'm not sure I could have held myself back if I'd found out this had been going on for a while. "You're gonna be okay, Tee."

"I d-don't want to f-f-face him," she said and I felt a new wave of sobs shudder up her body.

"You're not going to," I told her firmly. "You're staying here tonight. Jack's room is empty, you can sleep there if you want. Your dad leaves for his next trip Sunday, right? You can stay here until he's gone."

Tina's arms wrapped around me, hugging me tightly and pressing her closer into me. It was a good thing I was too focused on what was happening to realise just how close we were or I'd have been blushing. "Th-thank y-y-you, Artie," she said into my neck.

"Anything for you, Tee," I replied. She finally pulled back, swiping a hand over her cheeks to get rid of the tears. I noticed she winced as she touched her right cheek and I felt my anger jump again. "Lemme see that," I said gently, taking her chin in one hand and tilting her face so I could look at it better. The red was fading, or at least blending in with the blotchy redness from her crying, but it was darkened along her cheekbone. That was definitely going to bruise.

"Your make-up is a mess," I commented with a small smile, deciding it was best not to say anything about the bruise. It made me feel better when Tina faintly returned the smile. "You wanna go take a shower and get cleaned up? I promise I won't peek," I added when she looked hesitant.

Tina gave a quiet laugh. "Y-yeah, thanks," she agreed, slipping out of my lap. I moved myself down into my chair again and crossed to the dresser, tugging open a drawer. I pulled out a pair of plaid pyjama pants and from another drawer grabbed a Rolling Stones tee-shirt, and then offered them both to her.

"They'll be warmer than your clothes," I said. "And probably more comfortable too. I can't imagine sleeping in safety pins is comfy." Her smile was a little more genuine as she took them from me. "There's towels and washcloths under the sink, everything else is on the shelf in the shower. Oh and watch your head. There's a bar across the shower, just in front of the bench, you don't wanna clothesline yourself on it."

Out of blue, Tina had suddenly swooped down and pulled me into a one-armed hug. I patted her back awkwardly, a little confused. When she straightened up again she was smiling. "Th-thanks for everyth-thing, Artie," she said and then she slipped into the conjoined bathroom. I didn't fail to notice that in all the time we'd known each other she had never once stuttered over my name. I wasn't exactly sure what to make of it, but it still made me feel happy for some reason.

When I heard the water turn on, I went out to check that my brother's room was actually liveable. Thankfully it looked like Mum had given in and cleaned it up since he'd left last month, because it looked a lot tidier than it ever was when Jack lived here. Sure that she wouldn't be devoured by some sock monster under my brother's bed, I rolled down to the kitchen. I managed to find a Ziploc bag and stuck a couple ice cubes into it, wrapping the whole thing in a dishtowel.

I just barely got back into the bedroom before I heard the water shut off. As I pulled myself back up onto the bed, I tried very hard not to think about what was on the other side of that wall. I was just realising that I might have recently started developing a bit of a crush on my best friend, but now didn't seem like the appropriate time to be thinking about things like that.

She didn't make things easier on me when she emerged from the bathroom in my clothes, still towelling off her hair. My tee-shirt hung kind of loose on her shoulders, and the pant legs were rolled up several times so she could find her feet, but there was something really beautiful in how casual she looked. I loved her look and her originality, but this make-up free, tangled hair look definitely worked for her too. I would probably have been in complete awe of the whole thing, mouth open and eyes bugged out, if it weren't for the fact that I could still see the darkened shadow on the side of her face. That did a good job of keeping me grounded.

"Feel better?" I asked and she smiled.

"M-much, thanks," she said. I noticed that her stutter was getting under control, meaning she was calming down. She set the towel back in the bathroom and came over to sit on the bed with me.

"Here," I said, holding out the bag of ice in the towel. "You don't want that to swell up. You can do chains and fishnet, but I don't know if you can pull off the chipmunk look." I smiled, trying to keep the mood light, and thankfully it worked because she smiled too. She accepted the ice with another quiet thanks and rested it against the side of her face, wincing again.

We were silent for a moment, and then I noticed a nervous light in Tina's eyes. "W-what about your p-p-parents?" she asked.

"Don't worry about them, they'll be fine with it," I assured her. "They'll understand. They love having you over anyway. Although you might end up spending all weekend painting Lizzie's nails and doing her hair."

Tina laughed, something almost close to a real laugh. "I th-think I can b-be okay with that," she said. She thanked me one more time, gave me a hug, and then went out into my brother's room.

After I'd taken off my glasses and turned off the light, I laid back, finally letting all of the anger sweep through me. It scared me just how badly I wanted to lash out at Tina's dad, a man I'd never even met before. I had never been a violent person, but I wanted nothing more than to hurt the man for hurting her. The rational part of my brain told me that wouldn't actually do her any good. All I could do was make sure I was always there for her if this ever happened again, and pray that it didn't. I needed to be her rock like she'd been for me so many times.

It had only been about a half hour when I heard the slight squeak of footsteps on the hardwood floor outside my door and then the quiet whoosh of the door opening. The sounds stopped and I smiled. "C'mere, Tee," I said and I heard her jump in surprise.

"I c-can't sleep," she admitted as she slipped into my room and shut the door behind her.

I scooted myself to the side of the bed and then held up the blankets questioningly. "You wanna lay here till you can sleep?" I offered. Tina didn't answer, but just climbed onto the bed and slipped beneath the covers. "Don't worry, I won't come onto you," I promised when I noticed she was tense. Tina laughed appreciatively and I felt her relax as she rolled onto her side facing me, her arm tucked under her head.

I turned my head to look at her, since lying on my side was extremely difficult for me. I could barely make out her face in the darkness and without my glasses, despite the fact that we were hardly a foot apart, but I could tell she was staring at me. "You're the b-best friend ever," she declared suddenly.

I felt my cheeks getting warm. "You too, Tee," I replied. Her hand found mine under the covers and she slipped her fingers into mine. Despite her claims of not being able to sleep, it only took fifteen minutes before she was out.

The next morning I explained to my parents what was going on. I was vague about what her dad had done, just saying it was an argument, but the moment they saw the purple line on her cheekbone they understood. Her dad called her to find out where she'd gone, but she just told him she was staying with a friend and hung up, turning off her phone. She stayed with us all weekend, lounging in my pyjamas while we played video games and watched movies. She painted my little sister's fingernails three different colours.

Sunday night she went home late in the evening, when she knew her dad would be gone. She called me and I talked to her until she fell asleep. On Monday we went to school like nothing had happened, but I noticed that she stuck even closer to my side than usual.

When a jock approached us, on her side, reaching a hand out to shove her, she flinched. I knew she was terrified of being hit again, and I resolved to make sure it never happened again. So I dropped in a casual comment about my arms being tired, and she instantly moved behind my chair, pushing me. Normally I hated having other people in control of the chair, but if it meant that I could stay protectively in front of her at all times, taking the brunt of the hit-and-run hallway abuse, then I would take it. And it turned out she was pretty good about not steering me into things and not stopping so fast I slipped off the chair. Eventually having her walk behind me became habit just as much as our lunches together and having her come over to my house after school, or whenever her dad was in town for the weekend.

That was the next time I found Tina broken, and it was the first time I protected her.


	4. Confessions

The next time I saw Artie broken was the worst of them all, because I was the one that broke him.

It was in the first half of our sophomore year, and for the most part everything seemed to be going right for us for once. We were as inseparable as always, we'd both found a place to belong when the Spanish teacher, Mr. Schuester, decided to rebuild the Glee club, and while we were still at the bottom of the totem pole it didn't feel quite so lonely down there. Or at least we started eating lunch in the cafeteria with two of the other Glee kids, Kurt and Mercedes. My parents weren't happy when they found out I was doing Glee club, since it didn't look as impressive on a college application as Debate or National Honours, but after the one fight about it they didn't bother me again except to drop the occasional disparaging comment that I could ignore.

To top things off, the weird fluttery feelings I'd been having about Artie started getting a ton worse. I wasn't the sort of girl to have crushes, (I rolled my eyes at Rachel Berry's very obvious pining over Finn Hudson on a daily basis), but that was about the only way to describe the way I felt about Artie. He was still my best friend, but suddenly he was the best friend that I wanted to be closer with, hold hands with, sometimes even kiss. I never expected to feel that way about him, but once it started it wouldn't go away.

I started watching him, trying to find out if he liked me too. It was harder to tell with him, because he did a really good job at keeping everything he was thinking hidden away behind his smile. A defence mechanism, I knew. But I could pick up subtle changes in his expressions. The way his eyes lingered just a second too long on my face, the way his smile would become just a little shyer sometimes when he looked at me, the way he immediately reached back for my hand whenever he spotted a jock with a slushie, trying to tug me down and out of the line of fire.

As weeks slipped by and nothing happened, I started thinking that maybe nothing _would_  happen. Maybe I was imagining it and he didn't really like me. Artie didn't seem like the person to make a bit deal over dating. I knew it was because he didn't think he had much of a chance in dating, because of the chair, but I kept hoping and trying to show him that I didn't care about that.

My opportunity came when we found out that the school didn't have to budget to give us a handi-capable bus for Sectionals. I was upset, and that was nothing to the look I saw cross Artie's face. I'd never hated Quinn Fabray more in my life than I did when she suggested Artie could just drive up to Sectionals on his own, because although he tried to hide it, I could tell he was crushed.

The bell rang and I hardly had time to touch his shoulder before Mercedes was hauling me away. She was determined we'd get to class in time for us to find seats together, so neither one of us would have to sit by Jacob Ben Israel again. He might be in love with Rachel too much to really fixate on other girls, but that didn't make him any more pleasant to be around or any less creepy. I wished I could have stayed and made sure he was okay, but Mercedes is a force you can't fight against.

Mr. Schue made us all use wheelchairs for the week, as punishment for everyone being so insensitive, and for a while I was too focused on being in awe of how difficult it was to even think about how much I liked Artie. He made it look so easy, but I seemed to run into everything, and just going from one class to another had me exhausted. By the time we got to Glee practice in the afternoons, my arms were practically screaming in protest. And we still had to do rehearsals, again in the wheelchairs.

After one of our practices, in which Artie had been attempting to teach us how to do turns (we all failed miserably, except surprisingly Brad the piano player – not sure why he was there, but he was at least less terrible than the rest of us), I decided it was time to finally approach Artie. So when everyone left, I went over to him and told him how I'd never realised this wheelchair thing was so hard, and how I admired him for it. He just smiled and pointed out that it was like my stutter. Ouch, that did nothing to help my confidence and I decided maybe now wasn't the time to be asking him out.

Instead a different question sprang from me, one I'd been burning to ask since we'd met. "H-how did it happen?" He explained about the accident in the vaguest details possible, but it was enough for me. I was honestly surprised he'd told me at all, because he was never one to talk about things like that. And then he had to go and surprise me by throwing in the most off-the-wall comment I'd ever heard. Not that I hadn't wondered if his –  _stuff_  – still worked, I just really hadn't expected that sort of thing to come up in conversation. Too surprised to come up with a response, I just turned and left.

I could tell later that Artie was feeling awkward about what he'd said, and as much as it weirded me out too, there was just something too cute in his embarrassed face for me to be bothered. So I acted like nothing had happened, and even though he went along with it without a word, I saw the grateful expression in his eyes. However I figured maybe we should give it a little time before thinking about dating again. Somehow asking him out right after he informed me he was capable of having sex just sounded a little too – teenage hormones. And that was most definitely not what this was about.

We managed to raise up enough money for the bus when Puck made some of the most delicious cupcakes I'd ever eaten. I mean really, I'd eaten a lot of cupcakes before, they're my favourite, but these were insanely good. Actually really, there wasn't even really anything all that fascinating in the taste of them but I couldn't stop eating them. I'd bet about ten bucks of the money we raised was mine, not to mention the couple I snuck away without paying for.

At Glee rehearsal when Mr. Schue handed the money to Artie, I could instantly tell something was wrong. He'd smiled, but there was something forced about it and he stared down at the money thoughtfully. Finn was the one to ask, and then Artie did about the most selfless thing I'd ever heard; gave up his chance to ride with us so that any other kids with wheelchairs that came through this school wouldn't have to feel so cut off. My heart melted for him even more.

After practice I waited in the choir room for Artie to get back from delivering the money to Principal Figgins. I was determined that today would be the day. I would ask him out today. When he came back into the room he stopped to exchange a few words with Mr. Schue, looking both pleased and confused, and I noticed Mr. Schue just looked confused. He nodded to Artie and then left the room quickly.

"W-what happened?" I'd asked. Artie smiled and explained that when he'd gone down to give the money to Figgins, the principal informed him that the ramps were already paid for. Meaning he'd be able to come to Sectionals with us on the bus. I hugged him in my excitement, and when I drew back he was smiling shyly, that same shy smile he always seemed to reserve for me.

"Hey Tee, you wanna hang around and do something with me?" he asked and it seemed like he surprised even himself by doing it. He cleared his throat and continued, "Maybe I could teach you how to steer the chair so you quit running into people."

And I smiled and accepted. We had a great time, goofing off in the choir room for a while, eating a mini-meal of candy from the vending machines in the cafeteria, trying to toss skittles into each other's mouths (Artie was a lot better at that game than me), and culminating in wheelchair drag races through the halls. When he totally left me in the dust, I'd laughed, declaring it unfair that he had such an advantage. When he brushed it off, I couldn't help but be captivated by how easily he took it. I could see something in his eyes where it still bugged him, but just like with everything else he just sort of shrugged and kept going.

"This was a really fun date," I said, and I saw his pleased smile. It was the first time either of us had referred to this as a date, but I knew we'd both considered it that. This night was us beginning the transition from being best friends to being something more than that. Seeing his smile made something stir in me and I knew I had to act. "But I wanna get out of this chair."

Artie's smile had faded slightly as he asked why, but I simply stood up, telling him, "So I can do this," and then I kissed him. He didn't react much, taking it calmly just like he takes everything, but it was soft and sweet and his lips were tentative against mine. It made a whole new colony of butterflies whir into life in my stomach.

And when I pulled back and saw that shy smile, it woke up another desire in me. One that I'd been ignoring out of fear for months, years actually. Kissing him made me realise we really were on the start of a relationship, and I couldn't handle the idea of starting something with him like that when I was still lying. So I told him the truth. "I've been faking."

At first he was confused, that same innocent confusion that I'd seen thousands of times before. Naïve and trusting and curious, but without the slightest hint of worry or doubt. As I explained myself, trying to get everything out before I lost my nerve, I watched his smile slowly slip down and the light in his eyes dimmed.

I pleaded with him when he turned away from me, apologising and all but begging him to stay. He turned back and looked up from his hands, and by the set expression of his face I knew it wasn't coming. No forgiveness, no understanding, and no trust. Everything was gone. The look in his eyes as he delivered his final blow wasn't cold or angry like his voice, it was sad and hurt and betrayed. He left without a backward glance, and I crumbled, missing the chair entirely and curling up on the floor as I felt the tears coming.

Because this was the first time I'd broken Artie, and I didn't know if there was any way I could fix him this time.


	5. Reconcilliations

The next time I saw Tina broken hurt me as much as her, because I knew it was mostly my fault she was broken.

I came to school an exhausted, sort of ornery mess. It had been a hellish night for me, one that I wouldn't relive even if someone offered me the use of my legs back to do it. After months and months of building up the courage to ask out my best friend, we'd had a glorious date that ended in – to put it eloquently –  _shit_.

To say that finding out the stutter that had been present in her voice since the moment I'd met her was fake was a surprise would be a gross understatement. She'd kissed me, my god I couldn't believe what that had done to my head, and then she'd thrown that curveball at me. I'm pretty sure if I hadn't been so shocked, I would've broken down crying right then and there.

Thankfully my resolve held out until I was at least home. Once I was locked up in my room I'd heard my family's concern levels rising. My little sister Lizzie had been the first one to venture down to my room. She knocked on the door, because I'd locked it, but I ignored her. For a few minutes she'd stood outside, asking through the wood if I was okay and if I wanted her to make me brownies. When I never gave her an answer I'd heard her retreat down the hall, calling out, "Muuummm," as she went.

Not long after that my mum had come and knocked on the door too. I didn't answer her either, but she was more persistent than Lizzie. Finally, just to get her to go away, I yelled back, "I'm fine, Mum, just tired." She must have heard the bitterness in my voice because after telling me she'd be in the living room if I wanted to talk, she left.

I laid down and stared up at the ceiling, trying to get my thoughts in order. Was I really mad at Tina because she'd lied to me? Even though I was hurt, no that wasn't the reason. She hadn't lied to me exclusively, she'd been lying to everyone. In a way, I knew I should actually be honoured that she trusted me enough to be the one she finally came clean to. I couldn't think of it like that though, because I was still too upset.

Even though I'd said I hadn't, I did sort of understand why Tina had done it. It was hard, being different. I remembered the first few months after I'd come back to school after the accident. I'd hoped that things would go back to the way they were, but they didn't. Whenever people looked at me, it wasn't the way they had before. It was like I was an entirely different person, a lesser person, and they looked at me with pity. I got to a point where I started wishing that people would just leave me alone entirely instead of trying to pussy-foot around things and treat me differently.

Tina didn't have a wheelchair that made people treat her differently, but that didn't mean she hadn't had it rough too. Between moving schools every few years when she was younger and her overly-demanding parents that made it only too clear they didn't really want her, it was no small wonder she didn't want people to get close to her. I had learned a long time ago that pushing everyone away wasn't going to make things hurt less. It had just taken Tina a couple extra years to figure that out.

So I wasn't really all that mad about the lie. At least not too much. What I was upset about was the fact that now she was normal. Now that she had the self-confidence to shed her protective shield for a better life, who was to say she wouldn't shed her crippled friend in exchange for something better too? She was beautiful, and when she wasn't being shy she was charming and witty and funny. She was an amazing person, but no one had seen that because of the stutter. Now that that was gone, people would notice her and surely it wouldn't be long before someone else caught her eye.

That's why I'd turned away and left her in the hallways at the school. I was sure that whatever chances we had were now gone, and it would just be easier to take myself out of the picture right then instead of prolonging the inevitable and only winding up hurting myself worse. I thought that maybe if I was the one to cut the strings, it wouldn't hurt as bad. I thought wrong.

She'd called out after me when I'd gone, I'd heard the heartbreak and the fear in her voice. I didn't understand it, because I couldn't understand what she had to be upset or scared about. I was doing her a favour, wasn't I? Ending it so she didn't have to do it herself down the line.

It wasn't until I was laying in bed that night, three hours before I needed to get up for school and still without a wink of sleep, that I figured it out. After years of pushing everyone away, she had let one single person into her life. She'd built up what seemed like an indestructible friendship with that person, trusting him like she had never trusted another person before. And in her most vulnerable moment, the moment when she completely laid herself bare, he had turned his back on her, brushed her aside angrily, and then deserted her.

She had taken the bravest step in the world to entirely open her heart to me, and I had turned away from it and left her crying alone in the hallways. I knew she was crying, I'd heard her sobs echoing off the linoleum tiles behind me. And even though it had broken my heart all over again, I'd just kept going.

Needless to say, I wasn't in the greatest of moods when I arrived at school the next morning. I was running late because I was so exhausted, since I never had gotten to sleep, and when I got to my locker there was no one loitering in front of it. Presumably, Mercedes and Kurt were still with Tina at hers. I didn't mind, I wasn't in the mood to talk to anyone anyway.

I went through my classes like a ghost, not really bothering to pay attention to anything. Mostly I was focusing on trying to stay awake since I kept nodding off with my head propped up on my hand. I spent most of the morning trying to figure out what I'd do if I saw Tina. Every theory sounded wrong, and each new scenario seemed more unlikely than the last. I couldn't help but think that maybe this time things had been broken beyond repair.

This bitter thought was still in my head when Mercedes cornered me after my third period class. Without pre-empting, she came right out and asked me what the hell I'd done to Tina and that I better spill because she wasn't telling. I told her, none too politely (because honestly I was just too tired to care), just where she could stick her gossip-mongering attitude. In hindsight, I was very lucky to have not found myself looking up from the floor after that one.

She then informed me to drop the victim act ( _Act? Really_?) and that the moment she'd asked Tina why we hadn't shown up to school together, she'd broken down in tears. My gut twisted a little at this, but I still determinedly remained that it was none of her business.

"You don't wanna tell me what's up, whateva, but you're both hurtin' good and she's so damn scared of facin' you I can't even get her to go to classes," Mercedes informed me but behind the diva tone I could hear a genuine concern that softened my resolve just a little. Not to mention the fact that she'd said Tina was scared of me? Scared? Why? "You gotta go work this out, Wheels, 'cause she's not talkin' to anyone and I'm thinkin' you're the only person she will."

"Why me?" I asked before I could stop myself. "You said she was scared of me, why would she talk to me?"

"I dunno why she's so freaked out, I just know you gotta be the one to do somethin' because she ain't gonna have the nerve to come to you," Mercedes said. "Even with whatever is whacked out between you two, you're her best friend and that's who she needs right now."

I never thought I would see the day when I'd actually listen to Mercedes' advice, but I skipped my fourth period and went where she'd directed me. I should have figured that would be where she would hide out, and I pushed open the choir room door slowly. She was sitting on the front tier, leaning against a stack of chairs and staring down at her legs.

When my wheels squeaked slightly on the floor she tensed but still didn't look up. I folded my hands in my lap, picking at my gloves while I tried to think of what to say.

"I think we need to talk," I said. She just nodded slightly to her knees, and I took it as an invitation to keep going. "About last night – look, I just want to get this straightened out, okay?" I took a deep breath, trying to figure out just what it was I wanted to say. "I'm still not okay with what happened last night, you know, that whole last part anyway."

"I'm s-sorry."

The statement made me frown and I looked up at her. She was staring back, her dim eyes red and mascara trailing down her cheeks. Now that I listened, I caught the hitch in her breathing and realised that she was only stuttering because she was crying. I bit my lip and then nodded.

"So am I," I agreed. She looked surprised, so I elaborated. "I shouldn't have left. I was just so – I needed some time to think. And I did think about it. You've been my best friend for years and I don't want to be mad at you. So I'm not. I know that there's no way things are going to magically go back to normal, but can we at least try and still be friends?"

Tina just stared at me for a while, like she was deep in thought. She brushed the tears off her cheeks, which just streaked her make-up worse, and then she gave me the faintest smile I'd ever seen. "I'd like that," she said. In her eyes, still lacking the light they normally held, I could see a different story. She was saying 'if that's the best I can get, I'll take it.' She was still scared and hurt and vulnerable and a little angry too, but she masked it just like she always did around other people.

Which I didn't mind all that much, apart from the little guilty feeling in my stomach, because it was exactly the same thing I was doing. I wasn't really ready to be near her again, but I didn't want to keep fighting. So I sucked it up and told myself we'd both just have to tough this out until things got easier. I was broken, and I was just going to have to deal with that for now.

That was the next time I saw Tina broken, and that time there was a dark, twisted part of me that didn't really want to fix her just yet.


	6. Strength

When I next saw Artie broken, I realised that just maybe there was a part of him that still needed me.

Things had been strange and crazy and awkward between us for weeks now, ever since our date and break-up and almost make-up. Even though we'd both agreed to just move on, we never really talked things over and we never really reached any sort of closure about what had happened. I wanted to, and I could tell there was some piece of him that did too, if only to escape the weird situation we were in, but neither of us ever actually brought it up.

So we went about things as closely to normal as we could manage. We still met up in the mornings to walk to school, but we talked and laughed less on the way. We still had lunches with Kurt and Mercedes, but the conversation between us was sort of forced and without a lot of the old private jokes we used to share. We generally sat near each other at Glee, but not right next to each other like we used to. We walked home together, but I stopped going over to his house as much after school to study and he stopped inviting. It felt like we were friends that were trying to pretend to be best friends but not necessarily pulling it off.

And it was killing me.

Because he was still my best friend. I still wanted to be near him and be able to laugh with him and feel comfortable just being around each other, but we couldn't. He was still mad at me for lying to him, and I was still upset with him for making such a big deal about whether or not I was 'disabled'. Not to mention there was a part of me that wasn't sure if I could trust him the way I used to, because after all the faith I'd put into him, the moment I really needed him to listen he had just turned and left.

There were moments when I saw the old him come back, where we were almost back to normal again. Singing " _Proud Mary_ " had put the first genuine smile on his face I'd seen since we'd kissed, and when he met my eyes during our duet I had seen some of the old warmth in his gaze again. The disgusted face he'd made at Mr. Schue and Rachel's ballad had made me laugh behind my hand, and I'd seen him look at me out of the corner of his eye and smile.

While singing " _Lean on Me_ " to Finn and Quinn, he hadn't flinched away the time I'd put my hand on his shoulder. When Mr. Schue had given me the solo in " _True Colours_ " Artie had met my eyes and nodded approvingly, and he'd done the same thing when we'd actually rehearsed it. Walking home that night, he'd complimented me and told me we'd better do that song for Sectionals. He'd been so excited about the mattress commercial that Rachel scored us that he'd immediately turned back to talk to me about it, telling me about getting a new pair of suspenders (only he could make that sound cute).

I felt a small hope when, as Finn came barrelling into the choir room with murder on his face after Rachel told him the truth about the baby, Artie had instantly reached out and pulled me behind him, protecting me like he always tries to do. But the moment the explosion was over, he'd given me a sad smile and that had been the end of it.

The more time that passed, the less we turned away from each other to talk to other people instead, and the less we avoided each other. However we were definitely not back to anywhere near the place we'd been. As he healed from what I'd done, he seemed to become steadily more independent and didn't seem to need people around as much. It hurt me to watch him drawing away, connecting less with people than he used to, but he seemed to be surviving it well. Maybe for people like him, being independent and self-sufficient was a necessity, a natural part of adjusting to their lives.

All I knew was that he had stopped talking to me about it whenever he had a bad day or something was bothering him. I hoped that he was talking to someone else, but Kurt and Mercedes said he wasn't suddenly confiding in either of them, so all I could do was pray he had finally started talking to his family. He hadn't done that much before, because he hated talking to his parents about any sort of complication from the paralysis because he knew it killed his mother every time and his dad wasn't a whole lot better. Maybe he'd started calling his older brother, because I didn't think it was likely he was confiding in his ten-year-old sister.

I stopped confiding in anyone. I wanted to talk to people, I had tried to talk things out with Mercedes and Kurt a couple of times but it didn't feel right. They didn't understand me the way that Artie had. Their advice didn't come across as being really helpful (Kurt just usually told me to get a facial or a shiatsu and that it would make everything feel better - not exactly my idea of fixing things), and they didn't know how to instantly make me feel better the way Artie could.

He was the only person I wanted to talk to about the important things, and because we weren't really best friends anymore I couldn't. I was missing him like crazy, but if he missed being best friends with me, he was doing a really good job of hiding it.

It was a miracle our team managed to survive until Sectionals. First with losing Mr. Schuester, and then baby-gate coming out and Finn leaving, none of us thought we'd actually make it. We managed to scrape everything back together, or at least as close to together as we could get it. Mr. Schue found Jacob Ben Israel to pretend to be our last member, and then we all loaded the bus for Sectionals without much optimism. We'd lost our coach, we'd lost our lead male, and he was being replaced with a creep who had absolutely no clue what was going on. No matter how much we tried to act positive, none of us was really feeling it.

Then the whole world, and every shred of hope we'd had left, came crashing down on us. We went into the auditorium to watch the other teams, and it was Brittany's idea that Artie be carried to a seat so he could sit with the team ("The aisle is slanty, if we leave him there he'll roll away and then what if we can't find him?" No one bothered to try and explain his chair had brakes, mostly because Artie looked so hopeful at the idea.) Brittany and Mercedes lifted him into the seat between them, and we all settled back to watch the performance.

After " _Bootylicious_ ", which still made me a little uncomfortable and that's saying something considering I was the one to crotch-smack in my audition, one of the Jane Addams girls broke out into an all too familiar ballad. I could only watch in horror as they turned Mercedes' beautiful song into something as raunchy as their other numbers. Our morale was even lower and I felt Matt, who was sitting on my other side, shifting uncomfortably and glancing down the row at Mercedes.

I think I honestly felt my heart break when their next number began, because that song was even more familiar. I looked down at my lap, unable to watch the Jane Addams girls performing our song, Artie's song, without feeling sick. The one time I chanced a sideways glance at him, his face was set into a determined frown but he looked like he was on the verge of tears.

The moment their performance was over Mercedes was gone. Over the applause, I barely heard Artie lean toward Brittany and say, "Get me out of here." Rachel ran back to grab Artie's chair and then she and Brittany helped him into it. Before I could approach him, Matt grabbed my arm. "We gotta find Mercedes," he said in a low voice. "If not, she might kill someone." And as much as I wanted to help my best friend, I had to admit that he had a good point, so I followed him out into the hall and we split up to search the building.

It turned out it wasn't all that hard to find Mercedes. She was pacing in the waiting room alcove where we'd been before the performance. I walked over and the moment I touched her arm she turned to look at me and then slumped onto the couch, putting her face in her hands. I sat down next to her, trying to comfort her while the other Glee kids gradually joined us. Jacob had vanished, not that anyone really cared, and Miss Pillsbury was talking frantically on her phone, probably to Mr. Schue. I could hear a repetitive thud from off to my right, but I tried really hard not to look at him.

Eventually Miss Pillsbury walked off without a word to us, and I kept rubbing Mercedes' arm. "What are you doing here?" she asked me. When she looked up her eyes were red but she looked like she was very close to being 100% diva mode again. "I ain't the one you wanna be helping."

"Of course you are, M, you're my friend," I said and somehow managed to stop myself from looking over at the continued thumping noise that was my best friend. "Besides, he doesn't want to talk to me."

"Girl, this ain't about want no more," Mercedes said firmly. "He  _needs_  you."

I tried to argue, but suddenly a hand reached over the back of the couch and pushed mine of Mercedes' shoulder. "Go, we got this," Matt said and Kurt slipped down to sit on Mercedes' other side. I hesitated a second longer before I nodded and finally turned to Artie.

He was still running his chair into the wall over and over, although his pace had slowed a little from what he'd started at. Losing steam, I guess. His head was bent, staring at his lap, but I could see that his face was red. From anger or tears or something else, I didn't know. Walking over, I carefully put a hand on his shoulder. "Artie?"  _Thud._  "Artie, please just –"  _Thud_.

Rolling my eyes, I stepped in between him and the wall. He didn't stop fast enough to stop himself from hitting me, but at least it stopped him from backing up and trying again. I ignored the stinging in my shins and knelt down beside him, putting one hand on his arm. He didn't look up but he didn't brush me off either.

"I'm so sorry." I knew I really wasn't the one who needed to apologise, but it seemed like the right thing to say. " _Proud Mary"_  had meant everything to him, and that had been stolen from him. It was  _his_  song, the one where he was able to feel just like everyone else. The one that had shown him just how much everyone on the team cared about him and wanted to include him. Just thinking about how he must be feeling made me sick again.

"Why?" He wasn't asking why I was sorry, I could tell that much. He wanted to know why they'd taken it from him.

"I don't know," was the only answer I had. Because I didn't understand how anyone could do what those Jane Addams girls had done. It was bad enough they'd taken the song, but to perform it in wheelchairs too; it was like they were mocking him.

"It's not fair," he said darkly and I could tell he was trying not to cry.

"I know." I took his hand and squeezed it between both of mine, and he didn't pull away. After a second he curled his fingers around my hand, holding on tightly. His other hand moved up to rub his eyes beneath his glasses. "But we're not going to let them beat us."

Artie finally looked up at me. His face was red and he was still trying to keep the tears back, and I'd never seen him look so hurt, not even that night I'd told him about my stutter. "They took it all," he said miserably. "You know what we're gonna see when we go back in there, they'll have that song too. They took the team's song, and Mercedes' song, and mine."

"It doesn't matter," I said and even though he made a sceptical noise I kept going. "Artie, we worked way too hard to get here and just give up. We're loads better than them without even trying. They cheat to get ahead. We'll get ahead because we care more and we've got more heart than any of them. And we can go in there and prove to them that there's no way we're letting them beat us down like that. We'll teach them what happens when they mess with us."

I watched as a little spark of hope flared in his eyes and his breathing steadied out a little. Squeezing his hand tighter and looking straight into his eyes, I said, "I'm not giving up. What about you?"

Artie considered me for a second, and then he pulled me up into his lap and hugged me. "Not a chance in hell," he said and my heart soared when I heard him laugh a little against my shoulder. When he let go and I stood up, he fixed me with a small smile, something similar to what I used to see all the time. "You know you're quite the speech giver. You should take it on tour."

"Maybe later," I replied with a shrug. "Right now we've got a competition to win." Artie just smiled, and in his eyes I saw the thanks he was too proud to give me. The thanks for still being around when he really needed me. It wasn't all I had hoped for, things still weren't completely right between us, but it was definitely a start and that was enough for now.

That was the next time I'd seen Artie broken, and it showed us both that when it comes down to it, even the most independent person needs his best friend.


	7. Courage

The next time I really noticed that Tina was broken made me realise I was a coward.

I say noticed, because she had been broken for a while now and had never really been fixed. I'd known the whole time, but I had never really paid it much attention. We were both broken and I was sure that only time would fix it, so I let it go and tried not to think about it. It always seemed to catch me off-guard, when I saw her crest-fallen expression out of the corner of my eye or I heard her slip a miserable sigh when she turned to walk away from me at the end of the day, but I did everything I could to brush the guilt away and just move on with my day.

The problem was that I couldn't stop caring about her entirely. I wanted to be friends with her, but I didn't really have much hope that we could get back to where we were. And even if I'd wanted to, I couldn't stop caring so much about her. It felt like half of the time I was acting on instinct, when I would look over at her and smile, or when I'd make a quiet comment I knew would make her laugh for the sole purpose of hearing her laugh. They were almost a force of habit. As much as I wanted time away from her to think and let the old wounds heal, I couldn't stop being around her.

Glee club was definitely a huge part of that. Instead of spending time apart, it seemed like Mr. Schue had doubled the practice schedule just so we'd have to spend more time together. If we'd still been best friends that wouldn't have been a problem; except we weren't really best friends anymore. Well, we were, but we weren't. It was complicated. Everything about us was complicated.

Sectionals had been crazy, to say the least. With everything that had happened beforehand, we almost should have expected what we got while watching the other teams perform. Not that it made it easier on us. I don't think that our team morale had ever been as low as it was when we realised what was going on. I know mine hadn't. Seeing those girls perform our song,  _my_  song, making a complete mockery of it, had been just about as much as I could take.

And then she'd been there for me. Even though I'd treated her pretty badly for weeks, when I scraped rock bottom Tina had still been there for me. Just like she always had, she knew exactly how to make me feel better and she gave me the courage to keep going even though our chances seemed pretty –  _really_  – bad. Sure I could tell she didn't really believe most of the optimistic things she said to me, but that didn't change the fact that she was trying. I didn't know what to make of that, but I pushed aside all deep thinking for after the competition.

After what she'd done for me though, things between us seemed to feel easier for the rest of the day. She'd sat beside me in the green room while we'd been frantically re-planning for the competition. While waiting to hear the results at the end, her hand had latched onto my shoulder and I reached up to take it, squeezing it for strength and comfort. And when we'd won, she'd all but thrown herself into my arms, hugging me so much she nearly pulled me out of my chair. I hadn't seen that happy of a smile on her face in weeks.

The bus ride home had been pretty much a blur. We passed the trophy around, letting everyone hold it, and we'd sung until our voices were sore. Everyone was calling their parents to let them know what had happened, and Puck's mum and sister had screamed so loudly through the phone that he threw it across the aisle into Mike's lap in surprise. It was pretty hard for us all not to laugh at that.

Back at the school there was a whole siege of people waiting for us, or at least a siege of parents. It seemed like just about everyone's parents were there except Tina's and Quinn's. Neither of them was surprised by this. Eventually parents began snagging their kids out of the celebratory crowd and taking them home. When my parents came to get me, I told them I would meet them at home. Mum cast one quick glance at Tina and then just took my bag, nodding. I tried not to blush when she swooped over to kiss my cheek, whispering good luck.

Everyone was filtering off and eventually it was just Tina and I. "Where'd your parents go?" she asked curiously.

"They went home," I explained. "I'm walking you home, same as always."

Tina smiled and nodded and we started on the familiar route toward our houses. We talked idly about Sectionals for a while but I could tell she was distracted, and not in a good way. Before I got the chance to ask her what was wrong, her cell phone rang and she whipped it out and answered by the second ring.

"Hi Mum – Did you get my message? – Yeah we – Well yes, but – Oh okay –" I watched her expression falling with each sentence until her hopeful smile had turned into a disappointed frown. "Yeah but Mum – Right – Okay whatever. Bye." She huffed in irritation as she snapped her phone shut and stuffed it into her pocket again. "I don't know why I even try anymore," she said quietly, more to herself than me.

"Mum not excited we won?" I guessed and she shook her head. I knew she tried not to care what her parents thought, but every time they shut her down it seemed to crush her all over again. Tina had a habit of doing that; hoping for the best in people no matter how many times they disappointed.

I was a little surprised when she didn't elaborate. Normally she would tell me about it, let me know just how things had gone between her and her mother and how it made her feel. She used to tell me everything. Back before everything between us, she would have told me everything and then I would have made her feel better. But that was back before.

It was a real sucker punch when I realised that I had become one of those people that Tina had trusted and had disappointed her. Except apparently she'd gotten to the point where she didn't even try with me anymore.  _Ouch_.

When I glanced sideways at her, I noticed that her face was determinedly composed. How many times had I seen that expression over the last few weeks? How many times had she shielded what she was thinking from me? She never pushed the boundaries of our friendship any further than I had, and I knew it was because she was afraid of shattering the delicate balance we had. While I'd been sulking over how she'd betrayed me, I'd been repeatedly rebuffing her every time I had acted like less of the friend to her that I was. All because I didn't want to have to think about what had happened that night, and because I didn't want to have to deal with going through those emotions again.

She had been brave enough to break down every wall just to be closer to me, and I was too afraid to even peek through a window. She had ten times the courage of a normal person, and a thousand times more than me. I was a coward who had let my best friend suffer for weeks just because I was scared. She never let her fear keep her from helping me, not once.

We were nearing the street corner where we part ways and I knew I needed to do something. "Tee," I said suddenly, stopping and turning to face her. She looked down in surprise, and I realised that was the first time I'd called her that since our date. "Why don't you come over? You don't want to hang around your house alone, and I'm pretty sure I can convince my mum to make cupcakes."

She smiled faintly and I didn't fail to notice that hope lit in her eyes. "I can't say no to cupcakes," she finally said with a shrug. I just smiled back and, when we hit the street corner, for the first time in weeks we didn't part ways.

Mum did make cupcakes, and even though Lizzie helped so they ended up a little crumbly and the frosting was uneven, Tina declared them the best cupcakes ever. When we'd finished eating my dad handed me my guitar and the family demanded a performance. Even though both of our throats were feeling worn from the long day, we sang a couple of songs (my parents joined in on the older songs they knew, and Lizzie did a good job of some really bizarre style of dancing that didn't necessarily match the music but was funny to watch anyway and we were all laughing so hard we could barely sing).

At some point in the evening I met my mom's eye and she somehow psychically knew what I was thinking. It's always sort of freaked me out how mums can do that. "Why don't we let these two go relax? They've had a long day and we don't want to break their voices so they can't sing at Regionals." Lizzie had protested a little, but after Dad received a meaningful look from Mum he quickly drew Lizzie in with the promise of watching a princess movie, and Tina and I were finally free to escape to my room.

Once there, we settled down on the bed, both of us feeling a little uncomfortable despite the ease that had slipped between us in the last couple hours. Instead of side-by-side, we were facing each other; I sat against the headboard and Tina sat in front of me, her legs tucked underneath her. For a couple minutes we both just sat there, staring at anything but each other. Then finally I looked up at Tina's face, took a deep breath, and said, "Tee, I think it's about time we talk. I mean,  _really_  talk. About all of it."

And we did. We talked for hours, about everything that had been going on for the last few weeks and even about things that had come up before. I finally gave Tina the chance to explain everything about how she'd started her stutter, (which included more than just a speech in class and had partly to do with getting her parents' attention, which made it a lot harder to be mad). I talked about how I'd felt and why I'd left. My family never came and disturbed us, probably solely thanks to my mum, so we just kept talking until we ran out of things to say. There were some raised voices and an unfair amount of tears, admittedly not all hers, and a whole lot of I'm sorrys.

It was two in the morning when we finally laid down to sleep, even though we didn't actually go to sleep. Tina laid with her head on my chest and I put an arm around her shoulder, and we just kept talking. She told me about the things that had happened at home in the weeks we hadn't been talking, and I told her about the way I hadn't been able to face being around other people.

She told me about the fight she'd gotten into with her mother when she'd tried to talk to her about what had happened with us, one that had culminated in Tina's mum telling her not to waste her time on meaningless cripples ( _what did I ever do to her_?) and Tina calling her mother a lot of names that I didn't even realise she knew, and plenty that I didn't know either. I told her about how I'd gotten a second dose of slushie for yelling at Karovsky for making fun of her just four days ago and wound up in the dumpster after lunch period too just for good measure.

She told me about how she'd always thought I was so brave for being able to smile through what everyone did to me. I told her she was the bravest person in the world for being able to tell me the truth and still forgive me after everything I'd done to her. And then I told her that I had no idea what I'd done so right in my life to get to have someone like her be a part of it, no matter how corny it sounded. She smiled, said "Back at you," and not long after that she'd fallen asleep with her hand fisted in my shirt. I waited until I was sure she was asleep, and then I pressed a light kiss to the top of her head before I drifted off too.

The next morning - or rather noon was about the time we actually woke up - neither one of us had a voice at all, but we both smiled anyway.

That was the time I realised that Tina was still broken, and I vowed to never be too afraid to fix her again.


	8. Unconventional

The next time Artie was broken, I learned that even unconventional people need to be conventional on occasion.

It was early February and the relationship between Artie and I was running a lot smoother this go around. We weren't exactly dating yet, but our friendship was stronger than ever and we were both definitely aware that the sparks were back. We made a point to never lie or keep secrets from each other, telling each other everything no matter how mundane it was. Our old ways of being inseparable were back, and even though neither of us would say it, we were both feeling pretty hopeful about giving dating a second try.

Our busy schedules were keeping us pretty distracted from the idea of dating though. Mr. Schuester was working us almost relentlessly in preparation for Regionals at the end of the month, so usually by the end of the day we were both too exhausted to think of mustering up the energy to go on a date. Most afternoons we just wound up in his bedroom, ignoring our homework in favour of watching movies. Which was just as good for me.

I never really thought about us doing couple-y things, like going out on the clichéd dinner-and-a-movie dates or getting all freaked out about making sure our outfits matched for the upcoming dance. Neither of us was really into those sorts of things, and we both usually laughed at the people who acted like that. For us, laying around his house and playing video games or teasing his little sister were more entertaining and in a way they were more romantic too.

So I didn't think anything of it when the posters started showing up on the walls, headlining about the Valentine's Dance. I'd always thought Valentines was a pretty obnoxious holiday, and if there was anything I was eager about, it was to exchange amused theories with Artie about how hysterical Rachel was bound to get over it. We would probably spend Valentines at his house, watching old sci-fi thrillers and getting in a popcorn fight or something like it. Maybe even stuck babysitting his sister so his parents could go out.

It was a few days before I made the connection between the sudden stiffness in Artie's shoulders to the dance posters. I had noticed that there was something bugging him, but he wouldn't tell me what it was. So I started watching him closer, and that's when I realised that he mostly only tensed up when the people near us started talking about the dance. He hid it well, but there was a certain way his jaw would clench and his eyes would darken slightly that told me there was certainly something wrong.

Honestly, it didn't take me all that much thinking to figure out what it was. Dances, a common thing for other people, were something entirely different for him. They were another way that high school norms were showing him how different he was. He couldn't really dance – well, he could, just not like people generally do at dances – and I knew that he was feeling excluded. As much as he tried to pretend it didn't, being excluded from things really got to him.

It was less than a week until the dance, and Artie and I were in his room actually attempting to do homework for once. I was having a harder time than usual focusing on my science work though, because I could tell that Artie was still upset and it hurt me to see him like that. Finally after a half hour of awkward silence, I slammed my science book shut. The noise caught his attention, and he looked up at me curiously.

"What's up, Tee?" he asked when he noticed my set expression.

"I've been thinking," I said.

Artie smiled and interrupted me with an, "Uh oh, that's never good." I threw a pillow at him. "Okay, sorry, what have you been thinking about?"

"We should go to that dance on Friday night," I said boldly.

Instantly Artie's smile flickered and he broke eye contact, looking back down at his textbook. "Yeah, right," he said sarcastically.

"I'm serious," I said and I reached over to pull his book out of his hands. He protested but I just set it at the other end of the bed and then folded my arms over my chest stubbornly.

"I don't do dances, Tee," Artie said in exasperation.

"But you want to," I countered with a shrug.

"So what if I do, being in a wheelchair sort of null and voids the whole concept of dances," he said and even his years of practice didn't stop his tone from changing, getting both angry and hysterical. "People go to dances to dance, and I can't exactly do that, can I?"

"I always thought you were a pretty good dancer," I said, keeping calm. He didn't use his angry tone with me often, and I knew when he did it was often out of hurt and not actual anger. "Even if you are all hands." Despite a pretty obvious attempt not to, Artie smiled just a bit. "Let's just go and see what it's like. High school dances aren't all about dancing like they are in the movies, there's the cheesy punch bowls that will most likely end up spiked, and getting your picture taken a thousand too many times, and the making-out under the bleachers."

Artie snorted. "You make this all sound  _so_  tempting," he said sarcastically, but he was smiling.

"So are we gonna do it?" I ask, raising an eyebrow. Artie pulled his bottom lip between his teeth, looking hesitant. "Let's go, just to say we've done it. C'mon, it's just me. I promise I won't make fun of your bowtie."

"I will not be wearing a bowtie," Artie said indignantly.

I beamed. "But you did just sort of say you were going," I pointed out. Artie paused, his forehead wrinkling as he rethought the sentence and then he laughed.

"How do you do that? You have Jedi mind powers," he informed me, shaking his head.

"No, Artie, it's because I'm a girl," I replied seriously and he smiled.

"Okay, fine, we'll go," he said, rolling his eyes. "On one condition. You were saying something about making-out under the bleachers…"

I shove him playfully, laughing. "We'll see, depends on how much of a gentleman you are," I said. "The way you're behaving now, I think I'd be safer with Puck." Artie threw the pillow back at me and our study session dissolved into a pillow fight and eventually our typical movie night.

Friday night I spent more time than usual getting ready. I wasn't one to make a fuss about my appearance, but this was my first school dance, and my second almost date with the boy I was pretty much head-over-heels for, so it seemed like an occasion for a little vanity. I'd dug a dress out of the back of my closet, one that was too nice to wear to school but I hadn't been able to pass up on buying when I'd found it. It was black and midnight blue, with a sort of metallic sheen; close enough to my normal look to be comfortable, but nice enough to make me feel dressed up. Beyond that though, everything was pretty close to the usual.

When Artie showed up at my door (we'd agreed to just walk to the dance instead of dealing with the hassle of his dad driving us) I'd just been brushing my teeth for the fourth time. I answered the door and couldn't help but smile at the sight of him, dressed up pretty similar to the way he'd been for the yearbook photos. His eyes widened slightly as he took me in.

"Wow, Tee, you look good," he said in awe.

I laughed and stepped out onto the porch. "Always the tone of surprise," I said, shaking my head. Artie laughed and we made our way down to the dance. The teachers and most of the students hovering near the door when we showed up gave us weird looks, but I just squeezed Artie's shoulder when I noticed him looking nervous and we went straight past them.

It didn't take more than fifteen minutes of being at the dance to realise it was entirely lame. Crepe paper decorations aside, the DJ was horrible and for the most part everyone was just hovering around the room in clusters talking. There were a few couples in the middle of the floor, dancing rather inappropriately, but besides that it looked like a bunch of people dressed up and milling around like a gossip fest or something.

"Well this is – weird," Artie said and I laughed in agreement. "Maybe if you drink the spiked punch it becomes more exciting," he suggested.

"The way he's hovering around it so hopefully, I'm afraid drinking the punch might mean waking up with Jacob Ben Israel beside you," I said and Artie visibly shuddered.

"Not a mental image I wanted," Artie said, shaking his head. We had just come to the unspoken decision to go home when the music changed and I saw Artie hesitate. His eyes slipped out over the dance floor, which was steadily filling up with revolving couples, and I saw his smile fade slightly.

"C'mon, we might as well while we made the effort to be here," I said instantly. Artie looked up in confusion. "Just one dance."

"Tee, I don't –" I ignored him as I went behind him, pushing his chair toward the dance floor while he continued to protest. Once we had reached the edge of the group, I stopped him, and then walked around. Taking just a second to consider how best to do it, I sat down in Artie's lap, tucking my legs up against the side of his, and then wrapped my arms around his neck.

For a moment Artie didn't react, and then I felt his muscles relax. He wrapped one arm around my waist, and the other went down to his wheel, slowly spinning us in circles. I smiled and nestled my head against his neck, and when he leaned his head against mine I sighed quietly. And for that three minutes and some odd seconds while the eighties' love ballad played, we felt just like every other couple at their first dance. It was a nice feeling.

At the end of the song I sat up, and Artie was smiling shyly at me. "Thanks for the dance," I said with a grin and kissed his cheek.

"Yeah, you too," Artie replied and his cheeks were faintly red, but there was an intensity behind his words that told me he meant so much more. He glanced around the gymnasium and then back at me. "Movie marathon at my house?"

"Oh most definitely," I agreed, laughing. Artie turned us toward the door before I could stand up, so I ended up riding the whole five blocks in his lap. His parents were out celebrating and his sister was at a sleepover with her friends, so we had his house to ourselves. Changing out of our dress clothes and into sets of his pyjamas, we settled ourselves down in the living room to watch the Back to the Future trilogy with an enormous bowl of popcorn.

"Thanks, Tee, I'm glad we went," Artie said halfway into the first movie. His smile widened and he added, "Now I know not to worry about bothering going to any more. I mean I didn't even get that bleachers make-out session you promised."

I laughed. "You only got that if you were a gentleman, which you are most definitely not," I said. Artie pretended to be offended, and tossed a piece of popcorn at me. This started a full blown popcorn war and once we'd used up all our popcorn in tossing it at each other, we curled up on the couch to watch the movies.

"Oh and happy Valentines," Artie said abruptly, halfway through the night.

"About time you remember," I said in mock exasperation. Then I kissed him before I lost the nerve and this time he actually kissed me back. When we broke apart he smirked and picked out a piece of popcorn that had been stuck in my hair, and we both nearly fell over laughing.

That was the next time Artie had been broken, and we both decided afterwards that maybe we liked being unconventional even better.


	9. Defence

The next time I saw Tina broken, I wound up sitting through the most awkward dinner of my life.

It was nearing the end of our sophomore year and after a couple months of almost dates and dancing around the question, I'd finally gotten up the nerve to ask Tina to be my girlfriend. I'd gotten a half-exasperated, half-amused "finally" and a very enthusiastic kiss in response, and that's how we'd made it official.

When the Glee kids found out, their reactions were about the same as Tina's, well minus the kissing because that would have been extremely worrisome. Despite the fact that we had only placed, not won at Regionals so we didn't qualify for Nationals, there were still Glee jam sessions after school half the week while we threw around ideas for songs and performances. It seemed like maybe things for Tina and I were really getting great.

About two weeks after we'd started dating, I made my way over to Tina's house to meet her before going to the movies. Just as I got to the end of the walk, her door flew open and she stumbled out, slamming the door behind her and then covering her face in her hands.

"Tee, what's the matter?" I asked, rolling up the pavement to meet her.

"Parents," she mumbled out between her fingers. I reached up for her arm and when she pulled her hand away from her face I saw she was trying not to cry. "They, uh, they found out we're dating," she said and I felt a bit of trepidation in my stomach. "They're not happy."

"When are they?" I asked in a brave stab at humour and she gave me a small smile.

"They've been going on for the last hour straight about how I don't have time to date, and how I should have asked permission first, and how you're surely going to be a bad influence on me that will ruin my chances for a successful future." I snorted a little at the last one, because if either of us was a bad influence on the other, it wasn't me. Tina seemed to be thinking the same thing when she half-returned my smile.

"What are we going to do?" I asked, taking her hand again and squeezing it.

Tina blinked furiously a few times and then gave a partly-hysterical laugh. "They want to meet you," she said and her tone of voice made it feel sort of like I'd just been sentenced to the guillotine. "Dinner at my place. To make sure that you're not going to be a blemish against my college records and whatever else it is they think you'll do." She wasn't looking at me, licking her quivering lips the way she always did when she was trying not to cry, and I could feel her hand shaking in mine.

"Okay. When?"

Tina's eyes widened and she finally looked at me. "Really? I mean, you really want to do this? You know it's not going to be pleasant."

Did I really want to do it? Oh dear God no. Not in the slightest. I had heard enough horror stories about the adult Cohen-Changs from Tina over the last four years and they did not sound like the sort of people I wanted to meet. I hadn't forgotten the several nights over the years that Tina had climbed in through my bedroom window, crying because of some fight with them. Neither had I forgotten that animalistic desire to dismember Mr. Cohen-Chang after that first night she'd snuck into my room with a bruise on her cheek.

At the same time, she was my best friend. My girlfriend. I would brave anything for her, even if that thing included a meeting with the parents, which I was pretty sure would turn out even worse than that Ben Stiller movie about it. So I was confident as I met her eyes and nodded. "Yeah, Tee, let's do this."

She smiled and leaned down to kiss me. "Okay, I'll tell them," she said. "But not right now. We're going to miss our movie if we don't hurry. We can do it another night." We went to our movie, talking about anything but the forthcoming disaster dinner, and for a while we managed to be happy again and forget about it.

Six days later I was rolling up to the Cohen-Chang house again, this time so nervous I was pretty sure I was on the verge of fainting. As much as I tried to stay positive, assure myself that we could make everything work out okay, the closer I got to that front door the more I felt like I was rolling into the mouth of a waiting monster. And one with a particular liking for shredding up paraplegic boys, at that.

Before knocking on the door, I tugged off my gloves and tucked them into my pocket, wiping my sweaty palms on my slacks. I took a deep breath and then knocked. I didn't have to wait more than a few seconds before the door opened and I looked up at an American woman, with dark brown hair pulled back into what seemed like an overly-elaborate twist for the occasion and narrowed dark green eyes. She might have been pretty if her smile wasn't mocking and pitying at the same time, and she looked down on me. Literally and figuratively, I could tell.

"You must be Tina's friend," she said, like she didn't already know. I could still remember when Tina'd told me her mother had called me a meaningless cripple, and I tried really hard not to let that show on my face.

"Artie Abrams, ma'am," I offered and held out my hand. She ignored it entirely as she stepped back, holding the door open for me. Letting my hand fall, I pushed myself into the house. I'd been to Tina's house several times now, because whenever my sister had a bunch of friends over at my house we'd escape down here for the peace and quiet, but somehow it felt a lot more ominous than usual.

"Right this way," she said after she'd shut the door behind me, and then turned and led the way to the dining room. I once again privately thanked the fact that their expensive tastes meant the entire house was floored with hardwood. Pushing the chair over carpet is never easy.

The Cohen-Chang dining room was enormous. Freakishly so for being in a house with only three occupants, and two of them were basically only residents part-time. Tina had told me before it was for the times when her parents had work dinner parties, where they'd have to lay out the enormous tables. At that moment, the little rectangular table in the very middle of the room seemed unbelievably tiny.

"Hi Artie," Tina said and I looked over at her hopefully. Apparently her parents had gotten to her because her hair was pinned back and curled, her make-up had been toned down a lot, and her black dress was simple and severely lacking in pins or chains or rips. I wondered if it was because her parents had vetoed or if she'd just done it to keep them in a better mood, but I never did ask her.

"Hey, Tee," I replied gratefully. For a moment I'd forgotten I wasn't braving this alone, and seeing her there, even if she did keep biting the inside of her cheek anxiously, was relaxing. A little.

"Artie, this is my mum, Margaret, and this is my dad, James," Tina said, gesturing to first her mum, who had deserted my side the moment we'd gotten into the room, and then to her dad, standing at the head of the table. "Mum, Dad, this is my boyfriend, Artie."

"Nice to finally meet you," Tina's dad said, not bothering to even pretend to smile, and I knew right away how this night was going to go. And it was not well.

The dinner was good, even if it was sort of bizarre, (Korean cuisine, I figured), but I didn't really get to enjoy it much because I spent most of the time answering every question the Cohen-Changs shot at me. They grilled me about just about everything that was humanly possible to ask, a lot of which I felt was really unnecessary.

I don't know if I could have held up under all the questions if it wasn't for Tina. After the first few, I'd heard a quiet thunk. On the pretence of straightening my napkin in my lap, I'd looked down and noticed she'd reached across under the table and hooked one of her feet around mine. I couldn't feel it, but when I glanced up at her I saw in her eyes the message she was trying to convey.  _I'm here_. I couldn't help but smile at that, which ended up coming across oddly since Mr. Cohen-Chang was saying something serious at that moment.

Tina also ran interference whenever her parents' questions got out of control. She'd exclaimed loudly when her mother had very pointedly asked if I had any intention of "having intercourse" with their daughter (seriously, who says intercourse anymore?). I'd only been able to blush bright red while Tina berated her mother, and finally after her mother only protested that she wanted to make sure her daughter wouldn't wind up pregnant and have to drop out of college, I managed to squeak out that I didn't plan on it. It might have been a lie (teenage boy, after all) but it seemed to satisfy her parents for a second. It also seemed to be the only answer I'd given so far that had come close to making them hate me less.

As the dinner and the questioning was drawing to a close we could both tell that her parents were not thoroughly pleased. Or really pleased at all. "You seem like a very nice boy," Mr. Cohen-Chang said in a very condescending tone, "but really we'd rather our Tina didn't date. It distracts from her schoolwork and she needs to be fully focused on that. We would really prefer that you respect our wishes and stop seeing her."

"Dad!" Tina said in alarm, looking horrified.

"Don't argue with me, Tina," he said firmly. "I will not stand to watch you continue to disgrace this family because of your wild fantasies. It's about time you get your head out of the clouds and start acting like an adult. You need to grow up and accept the truth, that singing show tunes and dating charity cases," she screamed 'Dad' a little louder this time, looking torn between terror and rage, "isn't what will help you succeed. I'm just keeping the best interests of our family in mind," he said unconcernedly.

And then I did something very stupid. I scoffed. Instantly I felt everyone's eyes on me and I very nearly panicked. When I looked across at Tina I could see fear and hurt in her eyes, and that sealed my resolve. It was too late to back out now anyway.

"Did you find that funny, young man?" Mr. Cohen-Chang asked menacingly.

"Yeah, I did," I agreed. I really wished I could stand up and deliver this, but I had to settle for unlocking my wheels and pushing myself away from the table slightly, so I knew they could all see me clearly. "I think it's hilarious that you'd use the word family to describe this group of people, because there is nothing at all family about any of this."

"I beg your pardon?" Mrs. Cohen-Chang asked, looking scandalised.

"Families care about each other," I elaborated, slowly and deliberately. "Families are actually around when the others need them, they actually like each other. And I can tell already that neither of you actually cares about Tina. Neither of you knows anything about her, apart from whatever things she might be doing that go against your plan. And it's a real shame, because people like Tina don't come along often."

I met her eyes across the table and she was still fighting tears, but there was a faint smile on her shaking lips. It gave me the courage to keep going, and I drew in another deep breath.

"Tina is the single greatest person I've ever met," I say, glancing pointedly from one parent to the other. They were both staring at me in shock and anger. "She works twice as hard as anyone else in our year to keep her grades up for you. Even though you continually brush her aside every single time she tries to come to you about something, she never gives up hope that one day you'll actually listen.

"Your daughter is an amazing performer, which is something you would know if you'd come to a single one of our performances. Did you even know she got a standing ovation for her solo at Regionals? She's also an artist, which I'll bet you didn't know either. Even though she constantly tries to make you proud, in the end she's not afraid to be herself. Chains, coloured streaks, crippled best friend, show tunes, and all.

"And greatest of all, she has this beautiful heart. One day in a small town junior high, your daughter looked at a boy, one who everyone else in the school avoided. He was in a wheelchair, labelled a freak and dismissed by his former friends. But she looked at him in a way that no one else did, a way that made him forget that he was different. She became a friend to someone who people like you immediately judge and then push aside. I have no idea where she learned to do it, because it certainly wasn't from either of you, but that day Tina saw me instead of my chair and she quite literally changed my life. Maybe even saved it."

There was a ringing silence in the room following this as both of her parents continued to gape at me. Tina's hands were over her mouth, but I could see her watery eyes over her fingertips and the emotion there was gratefulness and trust and hope and something else that made my heart swell.

Taking a steadying breath, I turned my set expression back to her parents. "I'm sorry, I really tried to just go along with this and pretend that I was okay with what was happening here. I wanted to win your approval, and I wanted you to be okay with the fact that I'm dating your daughter. But no matter what you say about me and about us, nothing is going to change how much I care about her. Tina is a beautiful person. I can only hope that someday you will look at her and see that too, and that maybe one day you'll love her as much as she deserves."

No one said anything as I turned my chair toward the door and left the room. I'd gotten all the way outside and halfway down the pavement before I heard the front door swing open again. I braced myself, expecting her father to start yelling at me for being so disrespectful (and honestly if my mother realised I'd talked like that to an adult she'd probably kill me). Instead I heard a faint sob and then a heap tumbled into my arms.

Tina was curled in my lap, her arms around me and crying into my shoulder. I wrapped my arms around her too, trying to calm her. "Tee, I'm so sorry," I said, guilt filling me as I listened to her sobbing. I definitely hadn't won either of us any favours and as much as I'd meant every word of it, I wished I could go back and take it back just to make things easier. "I really tried, I didn't want to get mad at them, but I couldn't. Not the way they kept yelling at you. The way they kept putting you down. I couldn't take it, I'm so sorry."

"Artie, that was…" She trailed off, sitting up in my lap to meet my eyes. Instead of fear or anger or frustration or even hurt in her eyes, I saw that same hope and gratitude from earlier. She smiled. "Thank you."

I couldn't help the shy smile at the sincerity in her voice. "You're welcome," I answered. "And I really am sorry about that. They definitely won't be keen on me now."

"It's okay, I'm keen on you," she said and laughed.

And despite everything, all the trouble I'd just gotten us both into, I laughed. "Good enough for me." While she stayed in my lap, I rolled us both to my house. When she went home the next day, she informed me that her parents hadn't said a word against me, and they had instead chosen the very mature path of pretending that I didn't exist and that the night before had never happened. I wasn't about to complain, especially if it meant they wouldn't cause any trouble between Tina and I anymore.

That was the next time I'd found Tina broken, and the first time I felt the rush of standing up for and defending what you really care about.


	10. Cruisin'

The next time I saw that Artie was broken, we spent an entire afternoon joyriding around Lima.

It was the first week of summer vacation and everyone was celebrating. We were in his backyard, lounging on a blanket in the grass and keeping an eye on his younger sister as she and her friends had a water gun fight a few yards away. I laid with my head on his stomach while we both listened to his iPod, a headphone a piece, and talked about our plans for the summer.

"I don't want to go on that stupid trip," I complained after telling him about the week-long company cruise my parents were dragging me along to.

"Hey, at least they're making an effort to include you," he pointed out optimistically and I smiled a little. Ever since he'd completely verbally bitch-slapped my parents, he'd been quietly trying to make it up to me. It turned out that something of what he'd said must have sunk in, because they started paying a minimal amount more attention to me. Mostly in an attempt to make sure I was still doing what they wanted me to, but it was at least an improvement.

"Yeah, I guess so," I agreed, plucking a piece of grass and twisting it between my fingers. Then I smiled mischievously and added, "And I'll get to spend the whole week laying around the pool in my bathing suit."

When I glanced up I noticed that Artie was trying not to seem too interested in this idea, but his ears were red. He looked down at me and laughed. "That's just evil. Here I am trying to be such a gentleman and you're trying to corrupt me. If I didn't know better, Miss Tina, I'd think you were trying to seduce me."

I just smiled in response and grabbed his iPod, changing the song. He grumbled about it for a bit, but then I reached over and threaded my hand into his and he shut up. For a while we just talked about random things, mostly the music we were listening to, and then suddenly both of our phones went off at the same time. Exchanging curious glances, we grabbed them and opened the identical texts. They were from Mercedes, announcing excitedly that she'd just passed her driver's test and got her license.

Artie attempted a nonchalant smile when he set his phone back down, telling me to add in his congratulations with mine when I replied, but I could tell he was upset. After I'd sent the text, I moved up to lay beside him, watching his face cautiously. Driving was another sore spot with him, since he couldn't actually drive. I'd gotten my license a month ago, but I'd chosen not to make a big deal out of it for his sake. He had congratulated me when I'd mentioned it, made a joke about how I could be his personal chauffeur now, and then his smile had been half-faked for the next three days.

"You're staring," Artie remarked, glancing sideways at me and smiling. "I know you like me, Tee, but the stalker staring is sort of creeping me out."

I laughed indulgently and rolled over onto my stomach, my side pressed against his while I propped myself up on my elbows. "You okay?" I asked carefully.

"Fine, why?" I just raised an eyebrow, giving him a 'you know why' look and he rolled his eyes. "Can we not talk about it right now?"

"Okay, but don't think that if you keep procrastinating I'll forget," I warned with a shrug.

Artie gave a grudging smile. "You forget every single thing they tell us in science classes, but when it comes to bugging me you've got a super memory," he said and shook his head. We were quiet for a few minutes, me tying knots in grass stems and him brooding thoughtfully. His expression was sort of cute when he was thinking so intently, but it was so different from his smile that it made me feel a little weird.

"So what if I can't ever drive?" he said suddenly, dismissively. He wasn't looking at me, talking straight upward to the sky, so I didn't answer. He only ever ranted aloud to himself when something was really bothering him, and I waited expectantly for the rest of it. "It's not like it really matters. I don't have to deal with memorising all of that stuff for the tests and paying insurance and registrations and filling up the tank. It's probably better I don't have to worry about driving. Who cares if now all of my friends can drive and I can't? It's – no big deal, right?"

He finally glanced sideways at me and I realised that was my prompt to enter the conversation. "Doesn't really make a difference to me," I supplied. "It's not like there's anywhere to drive to in this town anyway. Everywhere we go is close enough there's no real point in driving to them. Besides, it's more eco-friendly not to drive."

Artie smirked a little at that last thing. "Yeah, that's kinda true I guess," he agreed, but he didn't sound very convinced, just like I knew he wouldn't be. "So there's no reason for me to be bothered that every one of my friends has a license and I don't. Because it doesn't really matter, right?" Before I could answer he scoffed and shook his head. "Who am I kidding, of course it matters. It just –" He made a noise of frustration and put his hands over his face.

"It's not fair, Tee," he mumbled from behind his palms. "I'm sick of being singled out. Why can't I, just once, be like everyone else?"

"Artie, don't think like that," I said gently, reaching over and pushing his hands off his face, tilting his chin so he'd look at me. "There's nothing wrong with you the way you are," he scoffed again, "and think of all the ways you've been able to fit in just like everyone else. Besides, I thought you hated cars because of…" I trailed off but he knew what I meant.

"Well sure, I guess they still sort of freak me out a little sometimes," he conceded. "But I think it would be easier if I were the one driving. The one in control, you know, instead of the passenger." He sighed heavily and frowned. "All I'm talking about is driving a car," he said darkly, but I could see the hurt in his eyes. "Everyone does it. Why not me?"

I didn't have an answer for that, and he could tell. Because honestly, what could I do? Nothing I could say would change the fact that he couldn't drive. So I changed tact with humour. "Oh c'mon, you know you like hanging out in the backseat of my car," I teased suggestively.

Artie regarded me for a second before he grinned. "Yeah except I've never been back there before," he pointed out. "We should try it sometime."

"Who's corrupting who now?" I said, nudging him with my elbow. He laughed and I saw some of the tension, not all of it but at least a little, leave his eyes. We managed to pass the rest of the afternoon without giving much more thought to driving, and although I could tell he was still distantly thinking about it when I kissed him goodnight, he smiled anyway.

The next morning my phone went off bright and early at eight o'clock, waking me up. Muttering sleepily, since I had only gotten four hours of sleep and no one should be awake at that hour during the summer anyway, I snatched it off the bedside table and flipped the phone open, already guessing who it was. "Hey Artie," I yawned.

"You're still asleep?" Artie asked in surprise.

"Not anymore," I pointed out with a laugh. "I was just up late on the computer. What's up?"

"Tee, this is so awesome," he said excitedly. "Dad found some stuff about manually-driven cars. They're cars made specifically for people like me. He's been talking to the company all morning, and it looks like we're getting one."

"That's so great!" I said and even though I was exhausted, his enthusiasm was infectious enough that my own voice sounded as excited as his. "So you're going to get to learn after all?"

"Yeah, looks like it," he said and laughed. "Dad says there are a bunch of government grants for it too, so it's not even going to cost us a whole lot. And there's all these –" Over the next half hour Artie filled me in on everything that his dad had learned about these manually driven cars.

A few days later Artie started driver's ed classes. He learned fast, probably because he was so enthusiastic. Almost every night he would tell me about the things he'd learned, and I couldn't help but smile because he was so happy. Most people complained about having to studying the driving rules books and put in all of the hours of training, (I definitely had), but Artie acted like it was an unexpected Christmas present.

Before the summer had ended, he called me to tell me he'd passed his test. When he told me to go to the window I saw his van parked in front of my house, and he waved up at me through the windscreen. I ran down and hopped into the passenger seat, regarding the manual car controls with awe. Suddenly driving my car looked a little less complicated.

We drove in aimless circles around town for a while, and I knew Artie was just drinking in the feeling of it so I didn't say anything about our lack of destination. He didn't stop smiling the entire time. He clearly loved the fact that he could drive his girlfriend around town, something which months ago he'd thought he'd never be able to do. I had to admit that seeing him feeling so empowered was really –  _moving_ would be the best way to describe it, I think.

When it started getting dark he parked at an ice cream parlour and we shared a celebratory sundae. I was pushing the chopped peanuts over to his side of the ice cream when he reached over and took my free hand.

"Thanks, Tee."

"Why?" I asked in confusion, looking up at him.

He shrugged. "I dunno, by now I just assume when something good happens to me that you had something to do with it," he admitted and his cheeks turned scarlet. I could feel my own face getting warm and I looked down at our joined hands.

"That's possibly the sweetest thing I've ever heard," I said, chancing a half a glance up at him, and he smiled.

"It was you though, wasn't it?" he asked earnestly. "Dad said he found all the information about these manual cars and driver's ed classes and the grant forms in an unsigned envelope on the front porch that morning. The morning after we talked about how I'd never be able to drive."

I just took a spoonful of ice cream and stuck it in my mouth, smiling at him. Artie laughed and started in on the ice cream too, and we didn't talk about his mysterious helper anymore after that. Although he did kiss me extra tenderly when he dropped me off at my house at the end of the night.

That was the next time Artie'd been broken, and it taught me that sometimes the littlest things, like a couple hours of late-night research on the computer, can become miracles to someone else.


	11. Superheroes

The next time I saw Tina broken, I ended up in the hospital.

It was a couple months into our junior year of high school. Tina and I had had a couple rough spots, but nothing compared to the things we'd been through in the past. Just the occasional "grumpy day" as my little sister liked to call them. In fact, hearing my sister refer to Tina's bad mood as such one time had been enough to get Tina smiling again and our disagreement was forgotten.

As much as I had loved that summer, what with having all that extra time to spend with Tina and my driving lessons and all, we were both really excited when school began again. We had half our classes together, and we got to go back to Glee club. It was a good feeling, having that slot to fall back into when we got back. All of us meeting up in the choir room before school, the normalcy of it, was sort of like coming home. Tina had laughed at me when I'd said that to her, calling me a sentimentalist, but then she'd smiled really soft and met my eye and I knew she was agreeing with me.

Everything seemed to be going really great for us. Even the torment from the jocks had died down a little. Not all the way, but it was definitely an improvement. It was nearly the end of the second month of term and as I was getting ready to leave my last class of the day my teacher had called me back up to the desk, wanting to talk to me about my paper. As pleased as I was when he was informing me that I'd done an exceptional job and suggesting a couple career paths I could follow, I was also pretty impatient to get out of there. I was supposed to be meeting Tina outside to go home together, (it was her day to drive, since we alternated), and I hated that I was leaving her waiting out there.

Fifteen minutes after the bell I finally escaped my classroom. I rushed through getting my things out of my locker and then rolled for the front doors of the school. When I got down the ramp I realised that Tina wasn't where she usually waited and I frowned. Before I got to look around a whole lot more, I heard a frightened noise and I quickly spun my chair to it.

There was a group of three jocks standing near the wall of the school, and I could see the legs of a fourth person pinned between them and the wall. Two of them were standing sideways, creating barriers and stopping the trapped person from getting away, and the third was bearing down on the person, laughing. My chest felt like fire because I'd recognise those boots anywhere.

I started rolling myself forward just as the lead jock took another step forward. I couldn't hear exactly what he was saying, but I really didn't like the tone he'd said it in. His friends laughed as he did something with his hands I couldn't see.

"What the hell's going on?" I shouted angrily when I got within a couple feet. All three jocks looked at me and laughed again, and one of them shifted so I could actually see Tina. She was cowering against the wall, each one of her arms held out of the way by the jocks on the side, and when she looked at me all I could see was fear and the slightest bit of hope.

The lead jock nodded to one of his friends and the guy let go of Tina's arm, coming over to intercept me. He cursed under his breath when I didn't stop moving, ramming his shins with the footrests of my chair. Before I managed to do anything more, he stepped around me and grabbed the handles of my chair, stopping me short and nearly making me fall forward out of it.

"Leave her alone!" I yelled once I'd righted myself, torn between trying to keep an eye on what was happening with Tina and turning to try and push away the guy holding my chair in place.

Apparently satisfied that I was dealt with, the lead jock had turned his attention back to Tina. She'd been swinging her freed arm at him, but it was her weaker left arm and she hadn't landed a hit that actually phased him. "Butt out, cripple, we're just getting to know each other a little better," the lead jock said with a grin. In a swift movement he'd stepped even closer, putting one hand over her mouth and the other one landing on her side. "Everyone says these crazy, dark chicks are real freaks between the sheets. Maybe she'll show it to someone who can actually appreciate it."

Instead of fear, as his hand slid over her hip her eyes had lit up with defiance. I didn't see exactly how it happened, but the next thing I saw Tina had bitten down on the hand that was over her mouth and her free hand had managed to catch him in the side of the neck. The jock bellowed and took a step back, jerking his hand away from her teeth, and then it happened.

Face red, he'd lifted his other hand. I saw the pure terror erupt in Tina's eyes as she realised what was going to happen a second before his hand slammed into the side of her face. My angry shouting died in my throat as I watched her collapse, and once she'd hit the ground she made a familiar scared noise, that same choked sob I'd heard two years before and I knew that was exactly what was going through her mind too. She lifted her head weakly and I got a glimpse of her face as her hair moved.

All of a sudden I was that barely fifteen year old boy again, seeing the bruise on his best friend's face and promising himself that he would never let anyone hurt her again. I twisted in my chair and brought the heel of my hand down as hard as I could on one of the hands holding my chair back. It was just enough to make the jock let go in surprise and pain, and I instantly grabbed the wheels and pushed myself forward.

Reaching the jock that had hit her, I took a wild swing at the closest part of him I could get to. Unfortunately for him, my shoulders were level with his crotch, and that just happened to be where my fist landed. His voice cracked as he fell to his knees, and I drew my hand back, landing another hit against his head.

Before I could feel any satisfaction at taking down the man who'd hurt Tina, his friends recovered from the shock. The one who had stayed at his friend's side the whole time came over, hitting me across the face. Then he'd kicked the side of my chair, and I panicked as I felt it tipping. Turning, I caught a glimpse of the corner of a brick wall before I met it with my face. I fell out of my chair as it hit the ground and I could smell copper.

"Shit, look what you did!" one of the jocks exclaimed. There was some mumbled bickering and then three pairs of footsteps, one staggering slightly, faded off.

Shaking my head to clear away the dizziness, I pulled myself up on my arms and dragged myself over to Tina. She was curled up on the ground exactly where she'd fallen, and I could hear her whimpering even over the pounding in my ears. "Tee, are you okay?"

She uncurled herself at the sound of my voice and looked up at me. I grimaced at the bright red spot on her cheek, but it was nothing to the look of surprise and fear she gave me. "Artie, your head," she gasped. In an instant she sat up and pressed one hand against the side of my forehead, and I almost recoiled because it hurt so much. When she moved her fingers back again, they were covered in blood. "What happened?"

"I fell against the wall," I said and put my own hand against my head. I could feel the deep split in the skin, probably from where I'd hit the corner.

"Artie, this is bad, we've gotta get this stitched," Tina said nervously. In a second she'd gotten to her feet and retrieved my chair. Once I was seated she pushed me toward the parking lot and then helped me into the passenger seat of her car.

"I'm fine, really," I tried to assure her when she slipped into the driver's seat after folding my chair into the back seats.

"No you're not," Tina replied firmly. She tugged off one of her arm warmers and leaned over to press it against the gash on my head, replacing my hand over it to keep it in place. "Pressure," she instructed and then threw the car into gear. "I'm so glad today was my day to drive," she said under her breath as we flew up Main toward Lima General. I continually tried to assure her I was okay, and ask her if she was alright, but she kept ignoring me on both counts.

In the ER they cleaned us both off, stitched up my forehead pretty quickly, gave me a bit of a painkiller, and let us go, after I called my parents to let them know what had happened of course. I just told my dad I'd fallen out of my chair and hit my head, deciding it was best not to elaborate everything that had happened before. I'd have to explain the black eye to him later, I just didn't want to do it on the phone. Thankfully as soon as he was sure I was okay, he accepted the story I'd fed him and told me to just be really careful until he got home from work.

Tina drove us to my house and twenty minutes later we were both lounging on my couch, freshly changed since it turned out my head had bled a bit and we both looked like we'd survived the first round of butchery in a horror film. Tina was holding a bag of ice against her cheek again, (I had one of my own on my blackened eye), and it was so oddly reminiscent of that time with her dad that I couldn't help but feel a little sick and angry again.

"Tee, quit fussing over me," I said when she tried to ask if I was alright again. I lowered the bag of ice from my face and tossed it onto the coffee table, replacing my glasses so I could see her better. "I'm fine. My head doesn't hurt anymore. It's not me I'm worried about." I looked at her pointedly but she was avoiding my gaze. "Tina, talk to me."

"I'm fine, don't worry about it," she said, trying and failing to sound dismissive.

"I  _am_  worried about it, Tee. Look me in the eye and tell me you're alright, and I'll believe it," I said firmly. She hesitated and I could see she was chewing on the inside of her cheek before she finally met my gaze. It only took a split second glance for me to see that she was not at all okay and she knew I knew it. Instantly she was in my arms, crying.

"They cornered me while I was waiting for you," she shuddered out into my shoulder. "Just trying to freak me out, scare me. I knew he wasn't actually going to do anything, not out in broad daylight like that. But then I saw you and I didn't want them to hurt you, and when he called you cripple I just wanted to hurt him. And then, after I bit him – It was just like that time with  _him_. I saw his hand coming and all I could think about was him. My dad. And it was just like that again and I was so scared."

"It's okay, Tee," I said soothingly when her voice died off. My insides were burning, but I fought to keep myself calm and under control, just like the last time. "It's okay, Tee, I'm not going to let anyone hurt you again. I promise. I'll keep you safe."

A few minutes later when she was a little more composed, she wiped her cheeks on the backs of her hands and looked up at me. "That was really brave, Artie, what you did," she said and there was a sort of admiration in her eyes that made me feel really warm all over. "Those guys could have killed you."

"Nobody's killing me while I've got you to protect," I said with a small grin, kissing her forehead lightly.

Tina gave a quiet laugh and stared up at me. "My own knight in shining suspenders, riding in on his LED-lit steed," she said, and as ridiculous as the statement was, she said it with such sincerity and conviction that I couldn't really laugh. Although I did grin and turn a pretty bright shade of red.

"Anything for you, Tee," I promised again, just like I had that night two years ago when she'd crawled through my window. Tina smiled and curled herself into my arms again. Somehow, despite all the rage and frustration I'd built up throughout the whole mess, when she sighed against my neck all of it sort of just washed away.

It was a half hour later when we were relaxing on the couch again, tangled up in each other like usual with a movie playing in the background that neither of us was really paying attention to. I didn't know what she was thinking about, although it must have been something serious because she had a pretty thoughtful look on her face. I was just trying not to think too much about the fact that she was laying on my chest, her legs wrapped around mine (I couldn't feel it, but seeing it sent shivers all the way up my spine), and one of her hands was idly brushing through my hair in a very distracting way.

"Artie." I glanced up to see her looking at me, her eyes finally looking completely calm again, even if there was still that strange new appreciation in them that I wasn't entirely opposed to, and a slightly mischievous smile on her face. "You know, I have to say the black eye and stitches do make you look pretty badass."

I laughed, glancing upward even though I couldn't actually see them. "You like?" I asked, raising an eyebrow, and then wincing and raising the other eyebrow instead when it moved the stitches. Tina laughed quietly, and I grabbed her hips, pulling her up so her face was closer to mine, and after that we didn't bother with talking much for a while, or at least until my sister got home from dance lessons.

That was the next time I'd seen Tina broken, and it made me realise that just maybe superheroes could come in wheelchairs too.


	12. Making Love

The next time I saw Artie broken, I realised he was a noble, romantic, self-deprecating cynic.

It was late in our junior year, exactly one year from the day he'd asked me to be his girlfriend. The day started off normally enough. It was a Friday, so we met up at the old street corner (after a couple months of alternating driving we decided it was both pointless to drive the few blocks and using up a lot of gas that neither of us wanted to keep paying for). We walked to school together, went through our classes, and Glee rehearsal just like any other day.

At the street corner Artie and I went separate ways, both of us heading home to get cleaned up since Artie'd told me that morning he was taking me out to celebrate. I hurried home to wash off my rehearsal sweat and changed into a nicer dress, and just as I'd finished reapplying my make-up Artie texted to tell me he was in the driveway whenever I was ready.

We went to a nice restaurant, not really fancy but definitely a step up from the old-fashioned sock hop style diner we usually went to. He admitted with a shy smile that it was the nicest restaurant in Lima that actually had handicap accommodations. After dinner we'd gone to a movie, some cheesy horror movie that we both tried not to laugh through. When we were leaving the theatre Artie frowned, because it was raining and he informed me that he'd planned on us going to the park to lay down and watch the stars.

Instead we went back to his house, only to find out that his little sister was having a spur-of-the-moment slumber party. It didn't take much debate to decide we didn't want to spend the rest of our evening getting in pillow fights with twelve-year-olds that wanted to put braids in our hair. And that's how we ended up in my empty house, sitting on my bed and having a thumb war while we listened our way through my music collection.

It started with an innocent gesture. Artie had pulled his hand out of mine after beating me for the fifth time, and he tugged off his gloves, tossing them off the bed into his chair. Then he took my hands and peeled off my arm warmers, throwing them down beside his glove. Grinning shyly, he curled his fingers around mine again and we went back to our game.

This wasn't the first time he'd done something like that. He'd complained once that the thing he hated most about the gloves was being unable to feel things very well with his hands, and he started taking his gloves off whenever I was around so he could feel it if he touched me. He didn't mind my fishnet gloves much, (I knew this had something to do with the memory of that time I'd found him on the flagpole in junior high), but he got annoyed by the thick arm warmers and eventually got to the point where he just took them off me whenever he felt like it. I thought the gesture was sweet, and there was definitely no denying that watching the way he determinedly and almost delicately slid the cloth off my skin sent pleasantly warm vibes through me that made me shiver. And put my brain in a very dirty place that made me happy Artie wasn't a mind reader.

Artie's guitar calloused thumb trapped mine and he laughed triumphantly. When I leaned forward it was with the full intent of distracting him so I could sneak my thumb out and finally win a round, but the moment my lips touched his I felt another stronger current run through me and I forgot that plan entirely. I pulled back just enough to see Artie's expression, smiling softly but his eyes intense so I was sure he felt the difference too, and then kissed him again.

From there everything was very much a "one thing led to another." He tentatively deepened the kiss (no matter how many times we did this he was always so shy about it, which was about the sweetest thing ever.) I took off his glasses, setting them on the bedside table without breaking away from him. His hands found my hips, pulling me onto his lap, and I gasped as he kissed a sensitive spot on the side of my neck. He stayed at that spot for a minute and as my hands tightened reflexively on his shoulders, trying to prevent myself from making another embarrassing noise, I felt him smirk against my skin.

Hell bent on returning the favour, I began working on the buttons of his shirt and pushed the whole thing off. Smiling to myself, I moved my kisses slowly across his jaw and down the side of his neck, feeling him tense slightly with every inch I moved. I pushed aside the collar of his undershirt and when I placed my lips gently against the point where his neck met his collarbone he made a really low noise in the back of his throat, his fingers digging into my hips.

His undershirt had come untucked when I'd pulled his shirt off, and months of curiosity spurred me to slip my hand underneath the fabric. At first he didn't react and then my thumb pressed over the valley of the muscle definition in the centre of his stomach, just above his bellybutton. Suddenly, he grabbed my wrist, unnecessarily tight, and pulled his face away from mine, gasping and closing his eyes as every muscle in his upper body tensed. He pulled my hand away from his stomach and took several erratic, heavy breaths through his nose before he finally opened his eyes.

"Sorry," he said quietly, letting go of my wrist and shooting me an apologetic look.

"Sorry, I shouldn't have," I said. I tried to shrink back, feeling bad for going so far, but one of his arms was still around my back and kept me firmly in place.

"No, don't," Artie said, shaking his head and not looking at me. "I'm okay now. You just surprised me. It, uh – tickled?" Somehow the last word came out like a question, and I knew he wasn't being honest with me because he wouldn't meet my eyes. When I grabbed his chin and turned him to face me, his eyes were pleading, begging me not to ask. I bit my lip and nodded, and his expression was grateful as he kissed me again.

Something in my mind was telling me this would be the night. I'd been thinking about it for a while now, wondering if and when it would come, but somehow I just knew this was it. This was the furthest we'd gone so far, and I could definitely tell there was something different this time. A new tenderness in the way his lips moved, and a new longing in the way his hands held onto me. He wanted it as badly as I did and it seemed like for once maybe those reservations he usually held had fallen away.

This time when my hands dipped underneath his shirt he didn't freak, although for some reason when I brushed against that spot again while pushing his shirt up he'd tensed again and moaned really quietly. I was starting to get the feeling that it was far from a tickle, but he distracted me when he lifted his arms, helping me ease his shirt the rest of the way off. And  _damn_ … That was definitely a sight I could get used to. I'd known the muscles were there, had felt them through his clothes while he'd held me close when we'd laid on the couch together, had already reasoned with his condition that he'd need the upper body strength, but…  _whoa_.

His fingers were light and nervous as they moved under the sleeve of my dress. I bit back a pleased noise as they traced a line over my collarbone, underneath the strap of my bra, and around my shoulder. Admittedly, by this point my brain was reeling from the fact that just being touched, the innocent feel of his fingers wrapping around my shoulder, was doing so much to my head. It warmed my heart as much as it did other places and I knew right away that it wouldn't feel like that if it was anyone but him.

Without hesitation, I reached around behind my back and pulled down the zipper of my dress. Artie had frozen a little at the sound and I saw a little hesitation in his gaze. "Too much?" I asked in a fearful whisper. Instead of answering, his hands moved to my shoulders and began sliding the fabric down, just as slowly and determinedly as he did with my arm warmers.

I'd never felt as self-conscious as I did as Artie's eyes followed the downward progress of my dress, until it was pooled around my hips, but it felt like all of that melted when he looked up at me again. He wasn't smiling (probably a good thing because I'm sure my brain would've taken it the wrong way and convinced me he was laughing at me) but alongside the new fire that had sparked in his eyes tonight there was also a softer, more sincere look.

He looked like he wanted to say something but couldn't find the words. I placed a hand on his chest and gently pushed him back until he was laying down, and I hovered over him, my legs folded and tucked against his hips still while I propped myself up with my elbows. Our kisses were growing even more intense, more longing. Repositioning myself, I slid my dress down off my hips and kicked it off, letting it join his shirts on the floor.

Even though I really wanted this, I was a little nervous. After all, it wasn't like I'd had much – or any – experience in this before, and neither did he. Still, I knew that it was the right time, and that we both did want it. We'd figure things out on our own, just him and I like always.

Taking a steadying breath, I broke away from his kiss and sat up. My hands moved to his belt buckle. All at once Artie had grabbed my wrists again, and with his eyes closed he gasped out, "Tee, stop." There was a slightly hysterical note to his voice, but it was still firm and insistent.

Shrinking back, I pulled my arms out of his grip and held them against my body. "I'm sorry," I said quietly and then bit down on my lip when I felt it quiver. His forceful rejection stung. "I thought you wanted –" My voice caught in my throat and I trailed off.

Immediately Artie's eyes opened again and he propped himself up on his elbows, squinting to see me. "Tee, it's not that, I do want you," he said just as earnestly. The tone of hysteria was stronger now. "It's just – you don't want this."

"What?" I forgot my hurt as I stared at him in disbelief. "Yes I do. Why would you think that?"

"Because." He let his elbows slide out from under him, falling back onto the mattress and covering his face with his hands before making a noise of frustration. "Because no one can  _want_  this, Tee. You're supposed to have someone who can actually  _do_ something. Someone who can make it really special and romantic and all those things. And I thought it could be me, maybe if I tried hard enough and wanted it enough then just maybe I could make it special. But I can't, because no matter what I still can't give you what you need and deserve. No amount of wanting is going to fix me and I – I can't, I can't do this to you, but I just –" He groaned again and then his voice faded off.

For a while I could only stare at him, and then I slipped off his lap, drawing my legs up to my chest and wrapping my arms around them protectively. I set my chin on my knees, trying to get reason out of what he'd said. "So you think that you're not special enough for me?" I asked.

Between his hands I saw Artie frown, and then he pushed himself up until he was sitting again. Looking at me seriously, or as seriously as he could while squinting, he said, "You deserve the best, Tee. And this, this whole first time thing, it's something that people remember for the rest of their lives. You should be able to look back and remember something good. I don't think I can give you that. I'm –" he scowled, trying to think up an appropriate word and then gestured at his legs and said, "I'm broken. With me you'll look back and just remember – awkward."

I couldn't help the quiet laugh that escaped me, and Artie looked torn between confusion and hurt. "Artie, I thought by now you'd understand me," I said, shaking my head. "You really think in ten years I'll be looking back and going 'Damn, too bad the sex wasn't better when I tossed my virginity out the window?'" Artie blushed a little at my frankness but didn't answer. "What I'm really going to be thinking about was whether I gave it up to the right person. Whether it was some stupid fling or if it was with someone special."

Artie looked down at his lap, chewing on his lip and refusing to meet my eye. "Fine, if you're that worried about it being my first, why don't I go out and get a quickie and get that out of the way so you'll stop being a spaz?" I asked with a hint more frustration than I meant to let out. He looked up in surprise. "I can always call that jock who wanted to find out just how freaky I am in bed, I'm sure he'd be willing."

Quite suddenly Artie's expression was so dark I nearly flinched back. "Don't joke about that," he said in a low, angry voice. I had known Artie was mad about that incident, and admittedly I had purposefully kept my distance from that jock since then and not just because I'd bruised his hand with how hard I'd bitten him. The thought of his hand on my hip sent unpleasant shivers through me, but I'd tried to keep that from Artie. His face right now was more threatening than I'd ever seen it.

Trying to steer my mind back on track, I latched back onto the conversation. "I'm not joking about any of this. Artie, it might be awkward, but what I really want to look back on and remember is sharing it with someone who I really care about." I hesitated, the words I'd been dying to say for months, ever since the night of the disastrous dinner with my parents, balancing on the end of my tongue. This wasn't exactly the situation I'd been imagining for the moment of finally admitting it. After a second's debate, I swallowed them.

"You deserve better than me," Artie said quietly and he sounded so completely heartbroken it actually made my chest hurt.

"I really wish you'd quit saying that," I said with a sigh. "Because I always think you deserve something better than me." This finally caught his attention again and he looked up at me in alarm. "You are the single most amazing person I've ever known. No one else in the world can have gone through what you do on a daily basis and still come out of it smiling. You take so much abuse and life is so hard for you, but you work so hard to never let it beat you and you never give up. Not until right now. Right now when you're trying to give up on us, out of some desperate attempt at being noble. It's sweet, what you're trying to do for me, but honestly Artie, it's you or no one."

He just watched me for a few seconds, and then he hastily looked away, blinking hard and biting his bottom lip so roughly I expected it to bleed. I moved my legs away from my chest and scooted closer, slowly drawing my arms around him. In a rush he'd wrapped his arms around me, pulling me against his chest and clinging to me tightly. "I don't know what I did to deserve you," he murmured into my neck.

"You're Artie Abrams, and that's enough for me," I answered and he gave a small laugh. After a minute he laid back, pulling me on top of him, and he just held me. I couldn't help but smile as I nestled my face against his bare chest, threading my legs around his and curling into the warmth of his skin. I was still in only my bra and panties after all.

"Artie," I said after nearly a half hour of laying there. I glanced up to make sure he hadn't fallen asleep, and he was staring down at me curiously. The moment he met my eyes he smiled and tightened his grip around me.

"I know, Tee," he said quietly. "I love you too."

Smiling a little too wide to be natural, I buried my face in his chest again. "Way to steal my thunder," I mumbled against his skin and he laughed, a bass note that vibrated his chest, before saying he was sorry. I just pressed myself more comfortably against him and he moved his arms around me like he'd never let go. As we lay there I decided that I'd happily forgo the sex if it meant I just got to lay here with him like this, because it felt almost too natural and good to be real.

Not that I was about to complain when the sex option came into play again.

His thumb brushed against my side and I felt a tremor go up my body as I tried to bite back a laugh because it tickled. Then I remembered something and I lifted my head to rest my chin on his chest so I could see his face. "You're not actually ticklish, are you?"

Artie's entire face went red. "No, not exactly," he admitted. "When you're like me, your, uh, well the physical therapist had some fancy name for it but basically your really sensitive spot moves north to a place where you can actually feel it."

"Wow," I said thoughtfully. "That's really interesting. I mean that your body adjusts like that."

"Yeah, I just really wish it wasn't in such an – accessible spot," he said with a quiet chuckle. "It was pretty awkward when Lizzie was trying to be annoying and was trying to see if I was ticklish. I kind of over-reacted and shoved her off the couch when she hit that spot. I think she's been mildly afraid of me ever since."

Grinning, I sat up, once again straddling his hips as I stared down at his stomach. "That is pretty out in the open," I agreed and then with another smile I reached forward and traced a finger over the spot.

Artie made that noise in the back of his throat and his breathing sped up just a little. "That's not fair," he gasped out. "I'm pretty sure that's some form of manipulation. Or cheating, or something." I just shrugged and this time I ran my fingernails over the spot slowly. Artie's neck and shoulders arched, his hands fisting in the sheets of my bed, and he made a strange noise that sounded like a cross between a moan and a gasp as his eyes rolled upward. "Okay, enough," he said once his muscles relaxed, and he pushed my hand away. "That's enough of that."

"Fine," I said and I laid down again, propping myself up on my elbows. Even though he was trying to look annoyed, he was also trying not to smile. When I leaned over to kiss him he responded eagerly and it didn't take all that long before we were right back where we were before he'd interrupted. Except this time, he didn't stop me.

It was a little awkward trying to get things figured out at first. Neither of us knew much more than what they tell you in health textbooks, and when it came down to the actual doing of what they preach against in class they didn't really give you a whole lot to go on. We finally got it worked out, me once again straddling his hips. He looked frightened when I grimaced at first, but I just shook my head, moving slowly until it stopped hurting so much.

We gradually settled into a rhythm. I reached down, holding his hips and helping him move the way he needed to. He looked a little uncomfortable about this, but it didn't take long for him to obviously stop caring about that detail. When one of his hands moved to rub against the inside of my thigh I lost it, digging my fingernails into his skin as I gasped his name. He followed right after that, and soon we were laying together, both panting, sweating, and exhausted.

"Wow," he whispered a few minutes later when his breathing was closer to normal. "That was – wow."

"Uh-huh," I agreed, because that was the most intelligent answer I could conjure up at the moment. Artie laughed, one out-of-breath chuckle, and then ran a hand through his hair, pushing it off his sweaty forehead. I shook my head a little, trying to clear it enough to make a real response. "I knew that must feel good, but whoa."

"Definitely," Artie agreed this time and glanced sideways to smile at me. "I never thought someone could make  _my_  name sound hot." I just laughed and curled closer to his side, wrapping my legs around one of his again and setting my cheek on his chest. We were quiet for a long time, our breathing steadily slowing down and Artie's heart stopped pounding so hard against my ear. I closed my eyes, letting the exhaustion sweep over me, and for a minute I considered drifting off.

"Tee?" I opened my eyes halfway, glancing up at him. "Thanks for putting up with me. I, uh, I know I can be a bit of a mood killer sometimes, but thanks for sticking around anyway. And, you know, for everything."

I just smiled and closed my eyes again. "I know, I love you too." I fell asleep to Artie's laughter.

That was the next time Artie had broken himself, and that night we both learned that making love is a whole lot better than sex.


	13. Family

The next time I found Tina broken, I learned that there are some things thicker than blood.

It was late in our senior year, only weeks before graduation. We were still dating, overcoming all the roadblocks that came up. Her parents started making it more and more known that they didn't approve of us being together, although they never actually did anything to really stop it. They also started making a bigger deal about what Tina was doing and whether or not it followed their plan. She kept blowing them off, giving them vague answers that half-satisfied them but that weren't completely true. We all knew it was only a matter of time before that bomb went off, we just didn't know when exactly that would be.

Placing at Nationals the last two years had definitely helped our statuses in school. Tina's more so than mine, since even if Glee was sort of less lame now I was still Wheelchair Kid, but I was okay with that. I could handle still having my wheels occasionally taped to the flagpole as long as I didn't have to see Tina dripping in slushie three times a week anymore. She still got some disparaging comments about being the "booty call for the cripple" but she seemed to take them all really well. She'd become nearly as good as me at shrugging off the insults.

With these improving developments, it turned out we were all actually pretty sad to graduate. Half of the original Glee club had already gone, and while new people had joined over the years and we became friends, it didn't feel the same as the bond we'd had with the old group. The thought of the last of us leaving and going our separate ways was terrifying to say the least, and pretty heart-breaking too. We'd all placed bets on whether Mr. Schue would cry again this year like he did last year.

I had another reason to hate the upcoming graduation. I was already set up to attend Ohio State, and if Tina's parents had gotten the strings pulled that they needed, which I was positive they would because they always did, she'd be heading off to Princeton, clear out in New Jersey. We hadn't talked about it much, since neither of us wanted to think about it, except to agree that we wanted to try and make it work somehow. There was no doubt it would be ridiculously difficult though. We'd been practically inseparable since the age of thirteen. Had I mentioned I was terrified? Because I was.

It was a Saturday afternoon and I was laying on a blanket in my backyard, the same place where Tina and I had spent a lot of days when the weather was nice. My headphones were in my ears, my final reading for my English class open in front of me as I lounged on my stomach. Every other paragraph I glanced sideways at the phone by my elbow, but the new message icon never lit up.

I honestly wasn't all that surprised. Tina's parents had been roping her into more and more things lately with graduation getting so close. Of course it didn't mean I was any less disappointed at the possibility of not seeing her again until Monday, since my parents had recently decided that we needed to start being more consistent about going to church on Sundays, and afterwards had become a bit of a family day. I was pretty sure it had something to do with Mum getting anxious about me leaving home.

I looked over my shoulder when I felt someone drop heavily onto the blanket beside me. Lizzie heaved an overly-dramatic sigh and I rolled my eyes, smiling as I tugged one of my headphones out. "What's the matter now?" I asked.

"Is Tina coming over today?" she asked.

"I don't know, why?"

Lizzie sighed again and settled her elbow on her knee, cupping her chin in her hand. "I wanted to talk to her about something," she said with a familiar pout.

"What about?" I asked curiously. She shrugged, still pouting. "Oh c'mon Lizzie, you can talk to me you know. I'm your brother."

"You're a boy," Lizzie argued, wrinkling her nose. Then she rolled her eyes and the amount of theatrics she put into the gesture made me wonder when someone had switched her brain with Rachel Berry's. Standing up, she wandered back into the house, ignoring me completely.

Shaking my head, I went back to my reading. Lizzie came back fifteen minutes later to check if Tina had come over yet and gave a huffy noise of frustration when she found out she hadn't. Twenty minutes after that I felt someone sit down beside me again and I laughed. "No, Lizzie, Tina still isn't here," I said before glancing back. Instead of Lizzie, I saw Tina. "Oh, yes you are."

I turned back to mark my page and then closed my book. Rolling myself onto my back, I pushed myself into a sitting position. "You've stolen my little sister, she doesn't want to confide in anyone but you anymore," I informed her, rolling my eyes. When her laugh sounded strained I finally took a good look at her face and I frowned. She seemed a little pale, and there was a wild light in her eyes like she always got when she was scared. "Tee, you okay?"

"Fine," she said, forcing a smile. "Sorry I didn't call before coming over."

"Have I ever complained when you've shown up at my house?" I asked, raising an eyebrow.

This pulled a little more genuine of a smile from her. "Only that time I walked into your room while you were getting dressed," she answered. I blushed at the memory. "I don't know why, not like it's nothing I haven't see-."

"Tee!" I said indignantly, putting a hand over her mouth and checking to make sure my sister hadn't come back out. The last thing I needed was for her to hear about that. I hadn't told anyone about what we sometimes did over at her house when her parents were out of town, and even if I was pretty sure my parents somehow psychically knew I wasn't going to take the chance. Not to mention that since Lizzie had hit the age where she was really interested in boys, I really didn't want her thinking that it was okay for her to do too. The fact that my baby sister was developing crushes was already enough to give me ulcers.

I was distracted from my alarm when Tina backed away from my hand so quickly she fell over on her back, a faint whimper escaping her. "Oh God, Tee, I'm sorry," I said, noticing that the wild look in her eyes had gotten stronger. "I forgot."

"No, it's okay," she said, smiling a little as she shook her head and came back to sit beside me again. She usually worked to hide it, but she'd been really paranoid about people's hands being on her face, especially around her mouth, ever since that jock had cornered her our junior year. Most of the time I remembered that and was careful about it, but in my moment of panic I'd forgotten.

"Still, I'm sorry," I said and when I held out my arms she slipped into them, nuzzling her head into my shoulder. Just thinking about the fact that the jock had scarred her so badly made the anger build up in me but I fought to keep it under control.

"Calm down, Artie," she mumbled with a faint laugh.

"I'm always calm," I lied, trying not to smile.

"Your heart is double-timing," she said and this time I just laughed, realising I'd been caught. "Don't worry about it; revenge doesn't look good on you."

"I thought I was badass?" I asked in mock offence, and she finally pulled back to look up at me.

"Yeah, the scar's still there," she said and brushed her thumb over the scar on my forehead just below my hairline. "Okay, maybe you're a little badass," she said and her smile was real this time.

"Thank you," I said, giving her a quick kiss and grinning smugly. She just rolled her eyes, trying not to laugh. "So, are you going to tell me what's the matter?"

Tina had a slightly deer in the headlights look for a second before she attempted to pull off casual again. "You just startled me," she said with a shrug.

"I meant before that, Tee. You looked like you'd witnessed a murder when you showed up."

Looking down at her hands, Tina began picking at a loose string on her gloves. I watched her as she slowly steeled herself, and every extra second it took her to compose herself made me more frightened about just how serious the situation was. Oh god, I hadn't gotten her pregnant had I? Just before I had the chance to blurt that out, she took a deep breath and said, "I got in another fight with my parents. They gave me the ultimatum."

"Uh oh," I said immediately and she gave a grudgingly, humourless laugh. "Which one? Stop dating me or they'll kill me? Or the take the colours out of your hair or they'll shave it off one?"

She smiled a little at my joking questions, but shook her head. Looking up at me, she licked her lips anxiously and took another steadying breath. "No, the finally follow the family plan or stop being part of the family one."

Floored would be a good description of how I felt when that one sank in. Almost literally, because I was so shocked that my arms buckled and I fell back against my elbows before managing to push myself up again. "Wait, they're actually considering _disowning_  you?" I asked in awe, trying to make that make sense in my head and failing. "That's sort of –  _archaic_ , don't you think?"

"They told me that if I didn't go to Princeton like they want and go through law school and stop wasting all my time on  _silly romances_ ," she said the last two words with heavy sarcasm, "and stop fighting against them, then they'd cut me off."

We sat together in the ringing silence for a while, Tina trying to collect herself and me trying to come to grips with what was happening. This was it. All this time and her parents had finally swung the axe on us. We had known that this was coming for a while, but the fact that it was really here now made me a little breathless.

Fighting to keep my voice normal, I squeezed her hand. "So I take it this is it?"

Every ounce of composure she'd built up disappeared and she was trembling as she fell against my chest, knocking me flat on my back again. She curled herself tightly against me and I held her, biting back my own tears when I felt hers through my shirt. I couldn't stop myself from clinging to her though, trying to absorb every last second of our connection just in case it really was the last.

"Hey, c'mon Tee, we both knew this was coming," I said, rubbing my palm against her back and ignoring the fact that I had let my tears slip. "We're just lucky they let us go this long. But we both knew this day would come."

Tina was crying so hard that I had a hard time understanding her next sentence, but once I did I froze. "What was that?" I asked, thinking I must have heard her wrong because there was no way this could really be happening.

"I chose you."

"Tina," I breathed, hugging her tighter for a second before pushing her away so I could see her face. "You didn't." She just nodded. "Oh God, Tee, why? They'll – you can't give up everything for me."

"It's not just for you," Tina said and there was an undercurrent of strength and defiance rising in her voice at that. "For me too. I did it so I could finally be myself. I don't want to have to live my life pretending to be who they want me to be anymore. I want to dye my hair colours and be proud of my sketches and my singing and be able to love you without them constantly getting on my back about it."

She was still trying to look confident, but I could see the fear creeping up in her again. "I couldn't take it anymore, and I told them that," she said and her voice had fallen to barely above a whisper. "He was so angry. I thought he might hit me again. But he'd just told me he was done with me. Told me to get out of his house and that if I came back I shouldn't expect to be let in. That my things will be on the lawn in the morning, and if I don't get them by tomorrow night they'll go in the trash. Then he'd just left the room and completely ignored me like I didn't exist. I – I didn't know what to do so I just left and came here."

I wrapped my arms around her and pulled her down against my chest, letting her cry again. My head was reeling, trying to comprehend what had happened. Tina's home life had never been a walk in the park, but even this seemed extreme. One minute she was like every other teenager, and then suddenly she was a homeless, family-less teen, not even eighteen for three more weeks. "I'm so sorry," I whispered into her hair, because it was the only thing I could think to say.

I wanted to tell her to go home, that her parents would forgive her and everything would be okay again. That's what normal parents would do. They couldn't just chuck their kid out on the curb and forget about them. Family was the sort of bond that couldn't be ignored. The problem was I knew her parents wouldn't see it that way. They wouldn't just forgive her and take her back, because they weren't like normal parents.

"I don't know what to do," she sobbed into my shoulder. "I knew they didn't understand me, but I never thought they'd do this. I don't have a whole lot of money saved up, I can't –" She trailed off and buried her face further into my chest.

"Hey, shh, it's okay," I tried to console her, thinking fast. "You're staying with us."

"Artie, I can't –"

"Don't start that, Tee," I warned, cutting her off. "It's not going to be any trouble. You practically live here anyway, and my family loves having you around. Honestly, I think Mum might kill us both if you  _don't_  move in with us." Tina laughed quietly and I took it as a good sign. "It'll be okay, we'll get through this. I promise."

A half hour later we went inside to explain the story to my parents. The moment Mum heard she enveloped Tina in one of her crushing hugs, and Tina ended up breaking down again in her arms. Dad pulled me out into the hall to get the rest of the details, and by the end he was mirroring my grim expression.

"Is that Tina crying again?" Lizzie asked quietly, poking her head into the hall. "It sounds like her. I've heard her crying when she comes over in the middle of the night."

I blushed, shooting her a warning look, but Dad just smiled at me knowingly and then relayed the basic story to Lizzie. Even though she looked horrified at what Tina's parents had done, she was obviously ecstatic that Tina would be living with us. Tina spent most of the rest of the afternoon braiding my sister's hair, painting her nails, and listening to her jabber non-stop about a boy in her homeroom she had a crush on. (I nearly had a heart attack when I realised that's what they were giggling about.) It seemed to do the trick though because by the time we sat down to dinner, Tina was genuinely smiling again over the haunted look in her eyes.

We skipped church the next day. Dad took Tina back to her parents' house to collect her things. He took Lizzie with them, but I got stuck at home helping Mum clean the last of Jack's things out of his old bedroom to make room for Tina's stuff. I knew this probably had something to do with their fears of what I'd do if I saw her dad while we were over there, and as much as I hated to admit it, one look at the ball of anger curling in my stomach told me they probably had a pretty good point.

I helped Tina unpack her things when they got back, and she told me everything in her room had been packed into cardboard boxes and left in a line on the lawn. Her voice was thick and her eyes were moist, but I could tell she was determined not to cry anymore. By the time we'd finished with most of her things, she was actually smiling again and trying to make jokes as if there was nothing serious about what we were doing. It never failed to amaze me just how strong she could be.

The whole family gathered to watch a movie that night, in an attempt to still hold our family night despite the hectic day. We squeezed Tina onto the couch between me and Lizzie, and halfway through the movie my sister fell asleep with her head on Tina's lap and her legs across my dad's. I watched the soft smile that crept across Tina's face as she brushed Lizzie's hair back off her face and left her to sleep.

Before we went to bed that night, Mum gave Tina a hug and a swift kiss on the cheek and Dad kissed her forehead, just like they did to both Lizzie and I. Tina's eyes watered a little, but she was smiling as she murmured goodnight and slipped into her new bedroom.

It didn't even take a week for Tina to fall into the rhythm of our house. She took everything in stride, but I noticed the grateful smiles she always seemed to wear. I could tell she still thought about her parents a lot, and there were plenty of nights she would crawl into my bed, trying not to cry, but for the most part she melded into our lives seamlessly and we wove her in as if she'd always been there.

That was the next time Tina had been broken, and we all came together to give her the one thing she'd never had: a family.


	14. Graduation

The next time Artie was broken, I found out that fixing the little hidden breaks is almost more satisfying than fixing the huge ones that he can't hide.

It was the last week of school before graduation, and the senior students didn't have to attend their classes because of all the preparations for the ceremony. Artie and I planned on spending most of the extra free time hanging out with the Glee kids and being lazy. We wanted to enjoy what little downtime we'd have left, because come the end of summer we'd be moving to Columbus to start college (thank God for Miss Pillsbury who managed to find me a decent scholarship to the same school as Artie, which I'd been accepted to clear back in November without telling my parents).

The day before graduation we were set to have a full rehearsal of the ceremony, which everyone was dreading since it meant hours of sitting there and trudging through the lines for no reason, and then we'd just have to do it all over again the next day. Graduations are not the most exciting things ever. Artie and I were sitting in his room, and he was playing guitar with a sort of intensity that made me feel there was something going on I didn't know about. He'd been sort of on-edge for the last couple days, and even though he'd tried to pass it off as nerves I knew there had to be more to it than that.

My phone vibrated and I rolled over on the mattress so I could reach to grab it. Flipping the screen open, I read the text and then looked up at Artie, who had stopped playing the tune the strings. "Hey, M wants to know if she can catch a ride with us to the grad practice," I said.

"Eh nuh guhrn." His words were a garbled mess through the guitar pick he was holding between his teeth, but somehow I still managed to understand him.

"What do you mean, you're not going?" I asked.

Artie sighed and pulled the pick out of his mouth, but didn't look up at me when he answered. "I don't have to go today," he said. "It's just for the people who are actually walking."

"Wait, you're not going to graduation?" I asked in horror.

"No, I'm going," he said but his voice was heavy. "They're making me come and sit with the class, for all the speeches and the stupid tassel-moving thing, but that's about it. It's not like I can exactly walk the stage. It has stairs."

"That's not fair!" I said indignantly. "They won't even make some sort of accommodations for you?"

Artie finally looked up at me and his face was closed-off, hiding what he was feeling behind a sort of indifference. "I asked them not to."

"What? Why?"

"I'm sick of everything having to be rearranged for me," he said and tried to pull off a casual shrug even though a little bitterness slipped into his voice. "They said they could have someone lift my chair onto the stage or something, but I told them not to worry about it. I don't like this having to stand out because I'm so different business. I'm done making a spectacle of myself, Tee."

I stared at his hard expression, trying to make sense of it. "So unless you can do it just like everyone else, you're just going to stop trying?" I asked in disbelief.

Artie frowned and turned his attention back to his guitar. "Everyone will be thinking back to their graduations, and everyone in our year will be thinking, 'Yeah ours took forever 'cause they had to stop in the middle to haul Wheelchair Kid up onto the stage.' I'd rather not deal with that. My parents get it, why can't you?"

"Because I know you, Artie, and this isn't you," I replied stubbornly. "You've always fought to keep going as much like everyone else as you can, and now for something as important as graduation you've suddenly decided to play the victim and give up?"

Artie tensed and even with his head bowed I could see him wince. "Just drop it, Tee," he said wearily. He glanced at his watch. "You'd better go if you're going to pick up Mercedes."

I looked over at the clock; if I left now then Mercedes and I would be about fifteen minutes early. I turned back to him, hunched over his guitar, and finally nodded. "Okay, I'll see you later," I said and Artie seemed relieved that I'd let it go.

"Later," he chimed back as I headed for the door. I stopped in my bedroom to gather my bag, and then left the house. When I got to Mercedes' house she could tell right away that something was wrong. Mostly because I'd never answered her text and had just shown up way early without warning. I quickly relayed to her what had happened and by the time I'd finished she'd gone full-blown diva rant mode.

"Oh no, we are most definitely not gonna let this one fly," she informed me.

Since we were early, we took the time to hunt down Figgins. I had an idea I wanted to run by him and when we finally found him it was a relief to have Mercedes at my back because she did a good job of wearing the principal down. Like I'd said before, Mercedes is a force to be reckoned with, and that's just when she's in a normal mood. In all this righteous indignation she had going on, she was pretty much terrifying.

It still took a lot of work to get Figgins to agree to our idea. He'd been stressing over and over that it just wasn't in the budget and stupid things like that. Of course he instantly relented when we told him we would cover all of the costs, and agreed that as long as we had an adult to supervise (for insurance reasons apparently) then we could do it. We hurried off to find Mr. Schue, who was sitting in Miss Pillsbury's office since school had just ended, and once we told him what we were planning he'd promised to be our supervisor.

The graduation rehearsal was predictably boring. If it hadn't been for my whispered planning with Mercedes in the back row, we'd probably both have fallen asleep. The moment it was over, Mercedes went to find Rachel, the only other original Glee member in our year, and I dug out my phone and dialed a number I'd had for two years but never thought I'd actually call.

"Hey Puck, it's Tina. I'm calling in a favor."

Getting him to agree had been almost too easy. I never had understood the weird friendship that had grown between Puck and Artie, considering that Puck had spent years making Artie's life hell before Glee, but they had gotten close and the moment he heard we were doing something for Artie he'd offered to help before I even told him what it was.

I sent a text to Artie, telling him I was going out with Mercedes and Rachel to have some girl time graduation celebrations, so I wouldn't be home until later. Mercedes returned with Rachel and a boy I knew was a friend of Artie's from jazz band, who had apparently overheard their conversation and offered to chip in a hand. Not long after Puck showed up, with Matt in tow, and we got to work.

It was late in the evening by the time I got back to the Abrams'. All of the lights were out and by the sounds of it everyone was asleep already, so I was quiet as I crept into my bedroom. I changed into my pajamas quickly and then climbed into bed. It had only been a few minutes when I heard a really light tap on the door and when I sat up it opened a crack.

"Tee, you still awake?"

"Yeah, come in," I answered and Artie rolled in, shutting the door behind him carefully. "I thought you were already asleep."

"Couldn't sleep," he said but when he looked down at his lap and blushed I had to bite back a laugh.

"Waiting up for me?" I guessed. Artie just shrugged and came over next to the bed. I patted the spot next to me questioningly and he smiled, pulling himself up onto the mattress. Once he was situated next to me I threw the blankets over both of us and laid my head on his shoulder.

I could hear Artie sniffing quietly. "You smell like a hardware store," he said and I could hear the repressed laugh in his voice.

"If that's your way of trying to seduce me, you need new material," I said jokingly and I felt the vibration in his chest as he tried not to laugh.

"Don't worry, I'm not here to seduce you," he said like he was trying to reassure me. Not that I'd thought he was, since we were currently right below his parents' bedroom and we never did anything when his family was home anyway. "Actually I wanted to say I'm sorry. For earlier. I shouldn't have snapped at you like I did."

"It's okay, we're all stressed out right now with everything that's going on," I said and shrugged.

"Still doesn't make it right for me to take it out on you," he said, giving me one of his serious looks. "So I'm sorry."

I regarded him for a second and then nodded. "So I forgive you," I said and then leaned up to kiss him. "But only if you stay here, because now I'm comfy and don't want to move." He muttered something about laziness under his breath, but moved his arm around my back and let me wrap myself closer into his side.

The next day was a chaotic, busy mess. Lizzie bounded in to wake me up for breakfast and then promptly backpedalled out of the room with a loud "ew" when she realised we were both in there, even though we were just asleep and not even as tangled in each other as usual. From there it had been a rush of getting ready, Artie trying to get into his chair in the graduation gown without strangling himself (which proved to be a surprisingly difficult feat), and then a really ridiculous amount of photo ops. Artie apologised for forgetting to warn me that his mom was camera crazy.

At the school we met up with Mercedes and Rachel. When the teachers came in to get us, we lined up and headed into the gymnasium, filling up the rows of seats. The four of us were at the very end of the line, since Artie had to stay in the back corner because of his chair. We held whispered conversations through all the speeches (well, three of us did – Rachel was trying to present a good audience by feigning over-attentiveness. Typical Rachel.)

The graduation music started, that really slow classic number that sounded like it was more suitable for a funeral than anything to me. I noticed the tension that crossed Artie's face before he hid it again, and I reached over to take his hand. Instead of acting defensive again, he'd just put on a completely fake smile that was obviously supposed to convince me he wasn't bothered.

The procession was only two rows ahead of us when I saw Artie's brow furrow. He leaned sideways slightly, narrowing his eyes to squint at the stage at the front of the gymnasium. "Tee, are –" He trailed off and his eyes widened, and he turned to look at me. "The stairs are gone."

I smiled and nodded. "Yeah, they decided to go with ramps instead," I agreed in an undertone. Artie glanced from the stage to me and back so fast it was a miracle he didn't get whiplash.

"What?" he asked in surprise. Then it dawned on him. "That's why you smelled like a Home Depot. You did this."

"And M and Rach," I listed, "and Puck and Matt and that Luke guy and Mr. Shue." Artie was gaping at me and I noticed that the row right in front of us was heading for the stage now. "I know you said you didn't want to do any of this, but this way it's not some big spectacle. Everyone's using them, so you can get up there just like everyone else is."

It was time for our row and we all stood up. I glanced back over my shoulder and gestured for Artie to follow us. He only hesitated for a second, and then unlocked the wheels of his chair and rolled behind me, still looking sort of dumbstruck. When the snail speed line finally reached the ramp, Mercedes and I moved behind his chair and we both kept a hand on the handles of his chair since the ramp was sort of steep, but Artie didn't even seem to notice the strain it put on his arms as he held his wheels to stop himself from rolling back down.

When he got up onto the stage and his name was announced and he accepted the diploma from Figgins, he had that super excited smile on his face where his mouth actually opened.

That was the next time Artie was broken, and I learned that in some situations, you can use a hammer and nails to fix people too.


	15. Repairs

The next time Tina was broken, I realised there are some breaks that can't be fixed.

The day of high school graduation had been a real blur. It would have been a lie if I'd said that I wasn't upset about not being able to participate in graduation, which was a lie I'd said several times over the week leading up to the ceremony.

Sitting through the actual ceremony had been pretty tormenting. All the way up until I'd noticed that there was something weird about the way people were walking down the stairs coming off the stage, and realised they weren't stairs at all. Tina had gotten people to help her build ramps, so I could go across the stage with everyone else. Just like always, she knew exactly how to fix my problems without making a big deal about it. I had no idea what I'd done to get someone as amazing as her in my life, but whatever it was I hoped it was enough to earn me a life-long pass because I had no idea how I'd survive without her anymore.

After the graduation had finished, and we'd all been showered in falling caps and tassels, the families in the bleachers had streamed down to find their kids. I was pretty much incapable of going anywhere, because there were so many people around that I couldn't move without fear of breaking people's toes. Tina stood protectively at my side, shielding me from half of the purses that would have hit me in the head, and I smiled up at her gratefully only to realise she wasn't looking at me. Her smile was vague and distant, like she was smiling out of reflex rather than real happiness, and her eyes were panning the crowd.

Before I could ask her what was up, my family found us. While my older brother was razzing me about how goofy I looked in a graduation gown, my crying mum had pulled a startled Tina into a hug. I realised that my family must not have known about the ramps either, because Mum was thanking her over and over again, telling her what a wonderful girl she was and how thankful she was to have her around. I didn't even ask how my parents knew it was Tina's doing. I figured by now they'd just gotten to same point I was at: where when something happened to make my life better it was somehow linked to her. Tina was blushing but she seemed pleased and her smile was a little more real.

My attention was seized back by my family when they started talking to me, and I lost myself in the conversation. We waited in a group in the middle of the gym floor, having to linger until the crowds thinned enough to get out. It wasn't until my dad made a comment about us all going to dinner to celebrate, and I'd looked over my shoulder to ask Tina what she thought of that, when I realised she was gone.

I felt my heart fall into my stomach as I scanned the room but I couldn't see her anywhere in the crowd. Lizzie noticed that she was missing too, and when she asked where Tina'd gone I met my dad's eye. "I'll, uh - I'll meet you guys out at the car, okay?"

"Yeah, take your time, we're not in a hurry," Dad replied casually, but there was a concern in his eyes that made me think he knew what was happening as well, if not better, than I did. "We won't be able to get out of the parking lot any time soon with all these people leaving too."

I nodded and turned, making my way out of the gym. Thankfully the crowd had at least thinned to half the original size, and while I took a lot of elbows and purses and camera bags to the face, most of the times that I bumped into people's legs it was their fault. When I finally escaped into the hall, I rolled hastily down to a darkened part of the school.

The door of the choir room was opened when I got to it, and Tina was sitting on the piano bench, running her fingers over the lid of the keys. She had taken off her graduation gown and it was laying in a heap beside the bench. Even though her back was turned, she had apparently heard me coming because she didn't even flinch when I pulled my chair up next to the piano and parked it. I stared at the curtain of her hair, since her face was hidden behind it again.

"I figured you would find me here," she said without looking up from her hand. I watched her fingers and with a smile I noticed she was drumming out the tune of " _Mary Had a Little Lamb_ " against the closed lid, the only song she knew how to play.

"Yeah, well, you're sort of predictable," I said and I heard the abrupt exhale of a light laugh.

We sat in the quiet for a while, the only sounds the rhythm of her fingers on the wood and the distant murmur of voices from the gymnasium. I didn't push, because I knew she'd tell me eventually. Honestly, I already had a good idea of what this was about, but I didn't want to jump to conclusions and bring that up if it wasn't what she was thinking of.

Tina sighed again and the pace of her fingers sped up, becoming sort of sharp and staccato. "I really thought they might come," she said and I noticed her voice was thick. Turned out my guess was right. "I know it's stupid, after what happened. But they always made such a big deal about school and diplomas, and I thought maybe they would at least show up. That maybe if they saw me succeeding like this then they could forgive me."

I didn't know what to say to that, so I just kept watching her. As I took in her appearance I noticed that she looked a lot more conservative than usual. Her hands were bare, fingernails unpainted, make-up light and clothing fairly plain, at leat by Tina-standards. When I'd seen it in the morning I'd thought she was just trying to look nice for the occasion. Now I understood that she'd been doing it in the hopes that it would impress her parents if they saw her. Except they hadn't come.

"It's okay," she said in a falsely light voice. "It's not like I really wanted them to come anyway. Why should I want to see them again, after what they did to me? After what they've always done to me?" Her fingers stumbled in the melody and she let her hand fall flat against the lid. "Why would I care?"

I took a breath, knowing she was expecting an answer from me and knowing exactly what my answer would do to her. "Because they're your parents," I said as gently as I could. I actually watched the sob shuddering up her spine and when I reached over to place a hand on her back she immediately followed my touch. Next second she was curled in my lap and I held her as securely as I could while she cried.

She'd hid the pain of her parents' dismissal really well recently. I knew it still hurt her, because honestly how could having your parents toss you out like the weekly trash not hurt, but she'd done a good job of moving on and accepting what had happened. As much as I wished there was some way she could just be over this, that I could help her stop caring and stop hurting, I knew it would never happen. This wasn't the sort of thing that someone ever fully recovered from. Seeing what had happened with Quinn and the Fabrays had shown us all that. It might get easier down the road, but it would never completely go away.

There was nothing I could do to make it easier on her, and nothing I could say to ease her pain. So I just held her and let her run the cycle of tears, getting it out of her system.

It took a long time for her to finally calm, and when she did she seemed reluctant to pull out of my arms. After a few minutes she took a ragged breath and then sat up. I gave her a sad smile and then rubbed my thumbs across her cheeks, wiping away the blackened tears. She smiled a little at the contact and I waited while she steadied out her breathing.

"I'm sorry," she said quietly and her hand touched the damp spot on my shoulder.

"Never be sorry, Tee," I said firmly. "Not for that." Her chin quivered a little, making her smile flicker, but she nodded and reached down to thread her hand in one of mine. I stared at our joined hands for a minute, giving her time to compose herself, and then said, "But if it makes you feel any better, there's two cars full of Abrams outside that want to treat you to the celebratory dinner of your choice."

Tina laughed and I dared to look up. The evidence of her tears was still on her face, but she was smiling and there was a real light in her eyes. I was pleasantly surprised when she leaned forward and kissed me enthusiastically, but even with all of the energy behind it, it was soft and sweet. I'd noticed she kissed differently depending on her moods. This was a gratitude kiss, a 'thank you for being in my life' kiss. One that I could definitely reciprocate.

She pulled back and kissed my nose, and when I wrinkled my nose at the gesture she giggled. For a minute we just sat in a really comfortable silence. "So," she said slowly, and I glanced up at her face curiously, "you were saying something about me getting to choose dinner?"

"Oh no, I know where this is going," I said with mock dramatics. "We're having pizza, aren't we?"

To her credit, she managed to look surprised at my guess. "How'd you know?"

I reached up and tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear, smiling softly. "Like I said, you're getting predictable," I answered. She playfully hit my chest and then climbed out of my lap. "You ready to go?"

"Just let me find a bathroom and clean my face up a little," she said with a smile, stooping to pick up her graduation gown. "My make-up is probably a disaster, huh?" When she glanced at me I nodded in overly-enthusiastic agreement, and next thing I knew she'd thrown the gown at my face.

Nobody said anything about her disappearance, or the signs that she'd been crying, when we finally made it out to join the family, and when Dad glanced back to ask where we were heading to eat, we both said, "Pizza," at the same time.

At the pizza parlor everyone continued to act like nothing had ever happened, except the slightest increase in the attention people gave her. Mom was constantly beaming at her, and Dad sort of was too for that matter, while Lizzie was very nearly glued to her side. Jack kept dropping in amused comments about how he was impressed his dorky little brother had managed to get a hold of such a good-looking girl (Tina turned pink every time this happened). His wife, Diane, asked her about the streaks in her hair, and shared an amusing story about when she was in high school and had dyed all of her hair a violent shade of pink. Tina seemed pleasantly thrilled when one of my nephews crawled up into her lap and made himself comfortable.

Midway through the evening, she'd met my eye and her smile was completely genuine. I knew her parents were still on her mind, but she was so enraptured by the feeling of being completely immersed in my family that for now she didn't care about blood relatives and negligent guardians.

That was the next time Tina had been broken, and while some breaks can't be fixed, they can be patched, and over time and with enough distractions it's possible to stop noticing the slight difference between the old and new.


	16. Philosophy

The next time Artie was broken, I realised how inseparably intertwined our lives had become because it broke me as well.

It was late winter and Columbus, Ohio was still coated in snow. Artie and I had been living there for just over a year, so we could attend classes at Ohio State. We'd found a nice wheelchair accessible apartment not far from campus, and we'd both managed to find decent jobs that helped us keep up with the rent.

Living together had been difficult at first. Despite the fact that I'd spent as much time in his house as mine since we'd become friends, and actually lived there for the last few months before college, sharing the apartment specially modified for people like him somehow managed to make Artie extremely sensitive about the finer points of living with his condition all over again. He eventually calmed down about it after a couple weeks, to the point where he actually laughed when I sleepily clothesline'd myself on the shower bar, and after that things had become almost too easy. Being together was just natural for us.

I was getting home from a late shift at work, grudgingly remembering I had a paper due next week I needed to finish. I could see the lights on when I got up to the door, meaning Artie was already home, and I rolled my eyes at the Christmas wreath still hanging on the door even though it was nearly March. We really needed to remember to take that down sometime soon. Still, I left it there like always and opened the door.

Before I could even get the door open enough to see inside, I could tell something was wrong. It was like I could feel the tension in the warm air that rushed out through the gap and it absorbed into me. My heart rate accelerating, I pushed the door the rest of the way.

Nothing really looked off, at first glance. The studio style apartment, open to make it easier for wheelchairs to move from room to room, was illuminated by the light on the living room wall. I noticed vaguely that half the things that had been on the kitchen table were swept onto the floor, and a few feet away was Artie's cell phone, open but with the screen dark. Artie was sitting in his chair at the table, his forehead against the tabletop and his hands laced together behind his neck with his elbows resting on the table as well.

He didn't look up when I came in and shut the door. I didn't take my eyes off him as I shrugged off my coat and bag, setting them in a heap by the door, and then I walked carefully toward him. "Artie?" I asked gently, in case he somehow hadn't heard me enter. I didn't want to startle him. He didn't move. "Artie, is something the matter?"

He still wasn't moving and I wondered vaguely if he'd fallen asleep like that. He really was a pretty heavy sleeper, and that might explain why he wasn't responding. Still, I couldn't shake the uneasiness and I took another tentative step closer. "Artie, what's happened?"

"Why does everyone like to lie and keep secrets from me?" The abrupt shout made me jump backwards a bit, surprising me. His head snapped up and his face was flushed, his jaw set in an expression I recognised. Anger and hurt. Even though I was pretty sure I hadn't been the one he was referring to with his question, that familiar expression made me feel guilty as I remembered a time I'd been the one to put it there after a secret and a lie.

"What's happened?" I repeated gently.

"He lied to me," he said, miserably but laced with anger. "For years, he's been lying to me. Keeping it a secret. All of them have, because they all knew. Everyone but me. They didn't want to bother me, because I was too fragile to hear those sorts of things. So they lied." His face hardened and he suddenly brought his fist down on the tabletop so forcefully I took several steps back. I was pretty sure I knew how everything had ended up on the floor now.

"I don't understand what you're saying," I said carefully. Honestly, I was a little frightened of him. Anger wasn't an emotion that looked good on him and I could tell he was very close to hitting a breaking point. "Talk to me. What happened?"

"I called them, just to say hi," he said and now his voice had adopted a bit of a breathless hysteria too. "Hadn't talked to them in a while. She answered the phone, and let it slip. I could tell right away that she'd said something she didn't mean to because she tried to backtrack. In the end she just broke down and told me the truth about it. She was the only one to tell me. Everyone else was keeping it secret. And you know why? Because I'm the poor cripple kid who has enough on his plate already without worrying about that too."

I just stared at him, trying to make sense of what he was saying. He wasn't giving many details away. I didn't even know who he was talking about yet, let alone what secret they were keeping. For all I knew he could be talking about the Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy admitting that they weren't real.

He finally met my gaze and even though his expression was still angry his eyes looked devastated. His voice was hard and flat when he finally clued me in. "Dad has cancer."

I felt sort of like I'd had my head bashed against the wall. I had always loved his family, ever since the first time I was over at his house and all six of us (his older brother was home visiting at that point) had enjoyed the most entertaining meal I'd ever been to. His parents had all but adopted me after mine had thrown me out, and I had gotten really close with them during that time I'd spent living with them. Even though I loved Mrs. Abrams, I'd always felt a closer bond with Mr. Abrams somehow, maybe because he was so much like Artie.

"He's had it since I was seven," Artie continued bitterly, "and he found out just after my accident. Colon cancer. He scheduled all of his doctor's appointments during times I was at the rehabilitation centre for physical therapy, so I wouldn't find out. If he had to stay for several days, he told me he was going away on business. And Mum and Jack both knew the truth and they just went along with it.

"It came back. This whole time we've been away at college he's been going in for treatments. Lizzie found out, but Dad made her promise not to tell me. They didn't want to worry me about it."

He made a noise of frustration and pulled his hands through his hair. "I deserved to know, don't you think?" he asked, a little too loudly. "I mean, it's my dad who's got cancer too, not just theirs. Just because I'm in the wheelchair they think that I don't have the same right to know. Do they think that the chair will make me take the news harder? Or that the stress will make my paralysis spread or something?"

His eyes were begging me for an answer but I didn't have one. "I don't know," I said quietly, shaking my head and fighting back tears.

"It's not fair!" he shouted, propping his elbows on the tabletop forcefully and burying his face in his hands. "It's not fair that everyone in the world treats me like a lesser person because I'm in the chair, and now my family is doing it too. I thought I could trust them. My dad, Tee; he's my dad and he's so sick and –"

That's where he cracked, all of the anger rushing out of him in one heavy exhale. He parted his arms so his head slid down and his forehead landed on the tabletop with a dull thump. Once again his hands wrapped over the back of his neck, and he was in the exact same position I'd found him in.

Finally regaining my senses, I crossed to the table and drew a kitchen chair up beside him. He flinched when I put my hand on his back, but he didn't pull away.

"He's so sick, Tee, and I shouldn't be mad at him but I am and I hate it," Artie said in the direction of his lap and I could feel more than hear him crying. "Why couldn't he just trust me?"

"I don't think that's what it is," I said rationally. He made a sceptical noise and I frowned. "Artie, sometimes when people keep secrets, it's because they're scared too." He tensed slightly and I knew he was picking up the fact that I was talking personally now. "They're scared that if they tell the truth then you'll see them differently. Cancer is a scary enough thing already, but your dad's got four other people to worry about and care for on top of that."

"Five," he interjected without moving his head. "You too."

I laughed shortly. "I was referring to before I came in, but okay, five," I relented. "We all know how much you look up to your dad. I was talking to him one time and he told me the greatest feeling he's ever experienced was when you were a little kid and you used to look at him like he was some sort of superhero. Not Jack, not Liz.  _You_ , Artie." A shudder rolled up his back and I heard him take a ragged breath.

"Superheroes don't get sick," I pointed out. "Maybe that's why he didn't tell you. He didn't want you to realise that your superman was just an ordinary dad, one that could get sick and be weak and need other people to help him. And at a point in your life when you'd really needed that hero. Maybe he was scared that you wouldn't look at him the same way anymore. That he'd be less in your eyes."

"It's still not right," Artie muttered sullenly.

"No, it's not," I agreed without hesitation. "It wasn't right for him not to tell you, and especially not for everyone to know except you. But that doesn't mean he didn't have a good reason for it. We all make mistakes, Artie. You forgave me."

Artie laughed humourlessly. "You weren't hiding a life-threatening illness," he countered.

"Maybe not, but I also wasn't the person that you'd looked up to since you were born," I said with a shrug. "The more the person means to you, the bigger their mistakes seem to be. But because you care about them more you have that much more opportunity to forgive them."

"That philosophy class is really getting to you, isn't it?" Artie teased without much conviction. He slumped sideways until his head fell against my chest, and when I wrapped my arms around him he broke down completely. I buried my face in the back of his neck while he clung to me, and I cried just as badly as him, because I was hurting for him and scared for his dad and his family.

Artie cried himself into quiet but didn't lift his head from my chest. "Is it wrong I'm mad at him?" he asked.

"No, I don't think so," I said, shaking my head. "I'm upset too. I think you have reason to be mad. But I do think it'd be wrong to not give him the chance to explain himself."

"Guess I should turn my phone back on, huh?" Artie asked with a hollow laugh and I smiled against the back of his neck.

"It would probably help," I agreed. Artie sat up, untangling himself from me, and after he'd brushed his hands over his cheeks he rolled over and retrieved his phone from the floor. We both ended up over on the couch, me sitting up at one end while Artie was laying with his legs draped over the arm of the couch and his head in my lap. His phone had a long list of missed calls on it (and I reasoned mine would too when I got it, since I'd left it home because the battery was dead).

"Here goes," he breathed, his thumb hovering over the call button. I was holding my breath as I watched his hand, and even though I was terrified I focused myself on transferring every bit of strength I had left in me into him. I placed one hand on his chest, and he covered it with one of his own, and with my other hand I stroked his hair softly. Artie closed his eyes, took a deep breath, squeezed my hand, and then finally pushed the button and put the phone to his ear.

That was the next time I'd seen Artie broken, and I learned that I can be his strength even when I'm scared too.


	17. Returns

The next time I saw Tina broken, I realised that she really never does give up hope.

It was late spring and we had been living together for two and a half years by this point, in our little apartment in Columbus. It had been a change for the both of us, adjusting from rooming with my parents in the hick-town to being just the two of us and the city life. We both occasionally got homesick but we visited my family a lot, and those friends that were actually still living in Lima. Other than that, we were really happy with where we were at, and with having that together.

The last year had been rough on us both, with my dad being sick. It had taken months of chemotherapy and radiation and surgeries before he was finally declared cancer-free again. Tina had been with me every time I went up to the hospital to see him, whether she had early morning classes or not. I appreciated it because I hated hospitals, but I knew that wasn't the only reason she did it. She loved my family as much as I did.

We were engaged at the end of summer, just a month before Dad's last surgery. It hadn't been a particularly romantic proposal, more comedic than anything when I think about it. The family was all gathered in Dad's room while he was recovering from another dose of chemo, and we were continuing our monthly family game night by playing cards in a circle around the bed. After everyone had congratulated Tina on being the first one to finally beat my older brother at poker, she'd made one of her usual comments about how much she loved being treated like part of the family.

"Oh please, you basically  _are_  family," Lizzie said, with a now trademark dramatic roll of her eyes.

"I agree," Jack said, grinning and shuffling the deck of cards in his lap. "In fact," he rounded on me, arching an eyebrow in a way I knew meant I was in for trouble, "why don't you just marry the girl already and make her an Abrams for real?"

I'd blushed, and when I glanced sideways at her she was blushing too. At the same time though, I saw something almost like hope in her eyes. So I took a steadying breath, smiled, and said, "What do you think, Tee? Wanna marry me?"

The room got really unnaturally quiet and Tina stared at me with wide eyes. There was a moment of doubt when I thought maybe I'd just done something really stupid, and I started trying to find ways I could play it off as a joke. Then she'd smiled, half-shouted "Yes!" and then all but threw herself at me. From there things had just gotten crazy, because Jack had fallen out of his chair laughing that I'd actually done it, Liz had actually screamed with excitement, which woke up one of Jack's kids who was sleeping curled up at my dad's feet, and Mum had, of course, burst into tears.

It had been nearly nine months since that day, and the date of the actual wedding was approaching a lot faster than I was ready for. Not that I didn't want to marry Tina, I'd decided at the age of seventeen that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her, it was just the whole prospect of  _getting_  married that was freaking me out. The wedding was scheduled for the beginning of June, after the end of semester so it wouldn't conflict with our classes, and just a bit more than a month away. We didn't count in the fact that this meant we'd end up doing the bulk of the finalisations for the wedding during final exams week, but we were somehow managing. Thank God for the friends and family we had to help out, or we'd both likely have stressed ourselves into spontaneous combustion.

On that particular Thursday, I was at the kitchen table and fighting my way through a heap of notes, studying for a test the next day. Tina had just gotten home from her last class of the day; I could hear her coming in even without looking up. "Hey Tee," I said, glancing up at her while I flipped over the page of notes I was reading before turning back to my studying.

"Hey," she replied, sounding a bit breathless. I assumed it was from running, since I could hear the rain pounding against the windows. "Would've been nice if the weathermen could give us a warning when it's going to downpour like this."

I laughed under my breath. "Yeah, but then they'd be useful," I pointed out and Tina laughed. "The rain slow you down? You're later than usual."

"No, had to stop by the dress shop after class," Tina admitted and I glanced up. "Don't worry, nothing serious. She just wanted to double-check my measurements before she finished the adjustments." I let out a sigh of relief and turned my attention to my notes again. "Looks like we've got another couple congrats cards from your distant relatives again."

I grinned without looking up. Tina had been in awe of how many family members I had to send wedding announcements to; my parents had nine siblings combined, and it seemed like it must be a rule in my family that no couple could have less than three kids because I had a lot of cousins. Over the week we'd had a lot of cards coming in from those relatives that wouldn't be able to make it to the wedding. There was already a decent-sized stack of them taking up space on the bookshelf in the living room.

I heard the sound of the envelopes landing on the kitchen counter and then Tina crossed the apartment to the bedroom. My homework was ignored for a second as I glanced sideways at her changing out of her damp clothes and into the skull-and-stars pajama pants she wore to lounge around the apartment in. I hastily turned back to the notes when she headed for the kitchen again, but I think she must have caught me because she laughed quietly.

"Want a hand with dinner?" I asked when I heard her rummaging through the cupboards.

"Nope, I got it," Tina said brightly, and I had to smile at her good mood. I wasn't sure exactly what had put her into it, because normally rainstorms made her nervous and the storm was intensifying outside, but I had a sneaking suspicion that her trip to see her wedding dress had something to do with it. Looking up to see the smile on her face made my stomach feel really light, and when she met my eye and her smile widened it made me feel just about as punch-drunk as she always did. "Besides, you look like you're pretty focused on that homework," she added jokingly and I just shrugged.

"I could easily be distracted," I offered, raising an eyebrow.

She laughed and rolled her eyes. "Nice try, Casanova," she said. "Do your homework." I sighed dramatically but went back to the drafting notes on the table when Tina started making dinner. While she cooked, I heard her opening the envelopes one at a time, and she gave me a running commentary while she did. "Hmm, one from Florida, a Mark and Anna?"

"Yeah, they're cousins," I explained. "You met them at the reunion last year. Mark's the one that rear ended the police car while rubbernecking at a girl on the sidewalk, remember?"

"Oh right," Tina said with a laugh and tore the envelope open. "Pretty card," she muttered and held it up for me to look at before she flipped it open. "Oh they sent a little family picture. Awh, their baby is cute." It went on like that for the next ten minutes, while she jumped between cooking and opening cards, and the occasional bill or piece of junk mail that she scoffed at in annoyance.

Out of the blue I heard a sharp intake of breath and I looked up in alarm. "What's up?" I asked, thinking she'd burnt her hand on the stove again.

"Nothing," she responded, way too quickly. I noticed that she was holding another envelope, and when she saw my eyes land on it she moved it so it was hidden behind her hip. Her face was sort of pale and she was determinedly looking anywhere but at me.

"Tee, what is it?" I unlocked my wheels and went towards her.

"It's nothing, really," she said but her voice sounded imploring, like she was begging me not to ask her any more about it. At the same time her eyes were growing most and her hand had tightened on the envelope so it bowed. I just stopped a few feet in front of her and waited, trying to keep my anxiety hidden behind a plain curiosity. She tended to respond better if I didn't act overly-worried. I think she felt guilty whenever I got scared, and it made her want to withdraw and deal with things on her own.

Finally her lip quivered, and then all at once her knees buckled out under her. I couldn't move forward fast enough to stop her, and I wasn't even sure I could have done anything even if I'd gotten there. She slumped down with her back against a cupboard, head bowed, but she held out the envelope towards me.

Seeing it from this close, I instantly recognised it. After all, two weeks ago I'd spent an entire day writing out addresses on envelopes just like this one. With a feeling of trepidation, I took it from her and noticed right away that the golden bell sticker on the back that sealed it shut hadn't been broken. It had never been opened.

Licking my lips, I flipped it over. My eyes were drawn instantly to three words that had been scrawled across the front in permanent marker and a sharp, angular, all caps handwriting.  _RETURN TO SENDER_. Beneath it, I could just make out the addressee in a bold, smooth handwriting that I recognised.  _James & Margaret Cohen-Chang._

"Oh God, Tee," I said, looking up from the envelope. She shuddered and bit down on her lip, tilting her head in a reflexive attempt to hide behind her hair even though she'd put it in a ponytail. "You didn't tell me you'd sent them one."

"I didn't want you to know," she whispered toward her knees. "I knew what you'd think."

I didn't know exactly what to say, so I hit the brakes on my chair and lowered myself to the floor, since I realised I wasn't going to get her up off it right now. She didn't even look up at me while I laid my legs out in front of me, propping myself up with my hands so I could face her. "Did you think I'd be upset if you told me?" I asked cautiously, a little bothered by her response to the last question.

"I knew you'd tell me I was wasting my time," she said quietly. "I mean, it's been three years and it's not like they've ever made any attempt to find out about me. And you'd be right; I just didn't want to believe it." She paused and her breathing was shaky. "I thought maybe they at least deserved to know. That they might care just a little bit. I didn't expect them to come or to answer or anything, I just thought maybe they'd like to know that I'm happy. That their daughter is getting married. But they – they didn't even  _open_  it."

"C'mere, Tina," I said gently, and with a sob she obliged, instantly transferring her weight from the cupboard to my lap. She wrapped her arms around me, fisting her hands in the back of my sweater, and I held her against my chest while she cried. "You never do give up hoping, do you?"

"Why do I always do this to myself?" she asked with her face still buried in my shoulder. "I know they're done with me, but I keep trying and I let them ruin all these times that are supposed to be happy."

"I think it's amazing that you're still willing to try after all this time," I said sincerely and pressed a kiss into her hair. "You're made of stronger stuff than I am." She clung tighter to me and I felt my throat getting thick at how badly she was crying, so I admitted, "But as much as I love your bravery, it hurts to see you let them do this to you."

"I'm sorry."

I couldn't fight back the exasperated laugh. "Why do you always apologise for the silliest things?" I asked rhetorically, rolling my eyes even though she wouldn't see it. "Don't apologise. I just want to know that you'll be okay."

It took a couple more minutes before Tina managed to compose herself, and when she pulled back there was a composed, resolute look in her eyes. "I will be," she said with a sort of new calm. Her hand lifted to brush along the side of my face affectionately and she smiled, her serious expression softening. "Because in thirty-nine days I'll be an Abrams, and then it'll be just you and me. That's all I need."

I tried really hard not to get misty-eyed at the sincerity in her gaze, because I could tell she meant it with every fibre of her being. For the sixth millionth time in my life I wondered what I'd done to get so lucky. I grabbed her face gently and kissed her, and when we broke apart I smiled. "What about the white fence and two-and-a-half kids?" I asked teasingly.

Tina actually laughed quietly. "Let's survive the wedding first," she suggested but I'd seen something spark to life in her eyes at the idea and that was enough for me.

She sniffed suspiciously and I saw her eyes widen before she jumped out of my lap. I watched curiously as she hurried to the stove and hastily flicked it off, and then investigated the contents of the pot. "Um, wanna call for take-out?" she asked, glancing over her shoulder at me with a shy smile. I couldn't stop myself from laughing a little, because I'd completely forgotten she was cooking before all this and it seemed like she had too.

"Yeah, I think I could be in the mood for some take-out," I agreed. I dragged myself back up into my chair while Tina scraped the burnt food into the trashcan. I pulled out my phone, but I looked up as I heard the pot land sort of heavily on the stovetop again. With a very determined look, Tina approached me and then knelt down, picking up the discarded envelope on the floor. I watched, torn between curiosity and awe, as she went back to the trashcan and, very deliberately, tore the thing into pieces and let it rain down onto the rest of the garbage.

It seemed like a shudder rolled through her body, and she let out a sigh that almost sounded like relief. The set of her shoulders relaxed like a weight had been lifted. When she turned to me, it was with a smile. "I'm done," she announced simply and then raised an eyebrow. "So what are we having for dinner?"

That was the next time Tina had been broken, and it was the day she showed me she was done letting other people break her.


	18. Retrograde

The next time Artie was broken, I figured out that maybe I'm not the only one who has old paranoias that won't go away.

It was wintertime, just before our first Christmas together as husband and wife.

Our wedding back in June was small, mostly just (his) immediate family and our friends, namely the Glee kids. His older brother had been best man, and Lizzie had been my maid of honour (Mercedes and Kurt forgave me for passing over them on that honour when I let them be my stylists instead). Jack's youngest son had been the ring-bearer, and Mr. Abrams had been the one to hand me off. It had been a small, intimate ceremony, but it was full of so much happiness and love and family that not even the blatantly empty pew where my parents should have been could dampen my mood. I'd cried a little, and Artie's eyes had been extremely bright while we'd exchanged vows. When we were announced for the first time as Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Abrams, I'd never been happier in my life.

The six months I'd spent as Artie's wife were the brightest of my life. There wasn't anything all that different between us since the wedding, really. As Jack had amusedly pointed out, we'd acted like a married couple since about the age of fifteen, and that had only been more obvious after we'd moved in together. I think for me the real relief was in seeing my name written as Abrams, instead of Cohen-Chang. Shedding my parents' name was my final step in shaking off everything they'd done to me over the years and officially separating myself from them. I had traded in my old family for a new one, and doing it had eased a lot of the tension that I'd been feeling. It was something like a fresh start.

And knowing, once and for all, that it would be Artie and I forever was definitely a bonus too.

When I'd got off work that night, Artie'd called me just as I was leaving, asking if I'd stop by the store and pick up some groceries on my way because he'd forgotten when he'd gone earlier. It was really dark put by the time I left the store (I'd gotten sidetracked in picking out a new colour of nail polish to get Liz for Christmas) and while I was inside it had been snowing pretty heavily. I'd only gotten a couple of miles out of the store parking lot when it happened.

Even though it felt like slow motion at the time, it had all happened extremely fast. I heard the blare of a horn and saw a car spin out on the other side of the road. The car in front of me avoided it, but before I could do any more than gasp in surprise I was being blinded by the headlights shining in through my window. I had enough time for one disconnected thought, one curious "Did I tell Artie I loved him before I hung up earlier?" before the SUV slammed straight into my door. The sound of metal on metal was the worst noise I'd ever heard, and it was accompanied by the shattering glass and my delayed scream and the loud crack of my left arm.

I wished I'd passed out then, but I'd stayed fully conscious as my car slid off the road, the SUV practically glued to my door at that point. For a second all I could do was sit there and stare in shock at the face I could see in the windscreen of the SUV. Then the numbness wore off and from that moment everything blew into hyper-speed. I wasn't sure who'd called them, because it wasn't me, but the ambulance and police arrived in what felt like seconds and before I really even had time to comprehend that we were travelling, I was at the hospital.

I'd managed to escape the accident in fairly decent condition, all things considered. My forearm was broken and had to be put in a cast (even in painkiller induced stupor, I had the brain function to choose the lime green casting instead of letting them put me in pink). There was a gash in my upper arm they'd had to dig glass out of before stitching it shut. Besides that all my other scratches and bruises were just cleaned up and I was fine. Even the shock and panic had worn off. Mostly I just wanted to go home.

Artie showed up just as they were finishing wrapping bandages over one of the deeper scrapes in my shoulder. I remembered distantly that I'd given them all my contact information when I'd shown up, and they must have called him for me. He was in his pyjamas and a jacket, and he was completely white.

"Oh God, Tee," he said and I could hear the fear and relief in his voice. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine," I assured him. "Just a little bumped up." He let out a heavy sigh and his head fell into his hands for a second. The nurse finished the bandage and told me I was free to go home. Artie's face had gotten extremely blank once he'd looked up again, and he didn't say much on the drive home except to ask me how I was and if I needed anything.

It wasn't until we were back home, getting ready to try and sleep, that he finally let it show that he was upset. I'd just changed into my pyjamas, a little awkwardly because of my broken arm, and when I turned back to the bed where Artie was sitting he was watching me with fear in his eyes. "Artie?" I asked nervously.

"I'm so sorry," he choked out.

"What? What for?" I asked and I hurried over to sit beside him on the bed.

"If I hadn't called you to go get those groceries, you would have been home before it even started snowing," he said, staring down at his shaking hands. "You would have been safe."

"Artie," I said sternly, trying and failing to get him to look up at me. "This wasn't your fault." His chin quivered and when I lowered my head in an attempt to see his face he turned his head to the side, away from me. "You know that as well as I do," I accused. "What is this really about?"

"God, when they called me," he said and then let his voice trail off for a minute. When he started speaking again the emotion was nearly inaudible now, blocked behind a wall. "It was so much like the last time. I didn't know what to expect when I got to that hospital."

"The last time?" I asked in confusion.

"My family has  _really_  bad luck with cars," he said and this time he actually looked at me and I understood instantly. "When they told me you were in an accident, all I could think was I'd done it again. That's why it happened last time too, did I ever tell you that? Because I asked my mum to run to the store."

He took a shaking breath and rubbed his hands over his eyes. "She'd been picking me up from baseball practice, and we were already on our way home when I begged her to take me to the store. I'd gotten a dollar from a friend at practice, 'cause he bet me I couldn't strike him out and I did, and I wanted to buy a candy bar. She'd been really reluctant about it, wanting to get home, but eventually she'd agreed and it was on the way to the store when we got hit."

His hand had drifted unconsciously to the line of his waist, on the right side where I knew there was a thick scar from the accident, and when he paused in his story he was taking in the bandages and scratches on my arms and neck and face. "When the hospital called me I thought I'd done it again. I ended up hanging up on him before he could finish explaining. All I'd gotten was that you were in an accident and I needed to get up there, but I didn't even hear whether you were okay or not."

"Artie," I said gently. I reached for him and he didn't fight me when I wrapped my arms around him, ignoring the stinging in the cuts on my skin as I pulled him closer.

"I thought it was history repeating itself again," he mumbled into my shoulder. He wasn't crying, but there was a hollowness in his voice that made me wish he would. He sounded –  _empty_. "It was too much like last time. I change the direction, send you to the store instead of just coming home, and then there's an accident. They called me and I – the whole way there I kept thinking what could have happened. I half-expected to get there and find you dead or something."

It was ridiculous of me but I felt the tears on my cheeks. Hearing him hurting so much was even more painful than the throbbing coming from my broken arm and the other injuries because my painkillers were wearing off. "But it's okay, Artie," I said quietly. "I'm here, and I'm okay."

Something tensed in his body and I wondered if I'd done something wrong. "I can't lose you, Tee," he said and I finally heard emotion cracking into his voice again. It wasn't much but there was a hint of desperation and a wavering precursor to tears. "On that drive to the hospital, I was even more scared than when it was me. More than when I was that eight year old kid with all the panic and mum screaming and the pain. I thought I might have lost you, Tee. Because of a God damn car, the way I lose everything. I can't do that."

He finally broke, and his arms latched around me, clinging to me with a sort of desperation he hadn't had since that day in the eighth grade with the flagpole. Just like that day, he pulled me impossibly closer and he buried his face in my neck, his glasses pressed awkwardly against my skin. I carefully slipped a hand up to take them off and he didn't resist, just taking the advantage of being able to curl his face closer against my skin. My left arm was pretty worthless, but I rubbed my right hand in circles between his shoulder blades.

I felt horrible for not recognising what it was that had him so upset. I didn't know about the store thing from his accident, he'd never gone into so much detail about what they were doing in the car that day, but I should have known that car accidents would be an extremely touchy thing for him. He'd done a really good job of dealing with his fear of cars since then, and especially since he'd learned to drive too, but I should have known that no one gets over things like that. It's sort of like how I still panicked when the dentist's hand came toward my mouth at the last appointment, even though I'd known what was going on. There are some things that people can try to forget, can push to the back, but that will still make themselves known when the occasion calls.

"I'm sorry," I whispered into his hair.

To my surprise, he chuckled quietly, a thin and watery chuckle but definitely one with amusement in it. "You apologise for the weirdest things," he informed me. He'd calmed himself down for the most part by this point and he eased his grip on me, moving one of his hands up my back to wipe at his eyes. "I should be sorry. You were the one who was just in a car wreck, I should be comforting you."

I smiled just a little. "In a weird sort of way, you did," I admitted and I felt more than heard him laugh again. I pushed myself out of his arms so I could see his face. It was flushed and his eyes were a little swollen, but despite the fear and sadness still lingering in his eyes I couldn't help but feel relieved that it was so much better than the empty void he'd been before. He offered me the slightest ghost of a smile. "You gonna be okay?"

Artie took a deep breath, a thoughtful expression on his face now. "Yeah, I think so," he agreed. He took another, longer breath and then met my eyes again. "Thanks."

I tried not to smile. "You always thank me for the weirdest things," I remarked and that pulled a real smile from him. I leaned over and rummaged in the bedside table until I found what I was looking for, and when I sat up he'd found his glasses and put them back on. "Sign my cast?" I asked with a raised eyebrow, holding the permanent marker out to him.

"Why do you keep Sharpies in the nightstand?" he asked curiously but took it from me. He took my arm, gingerly, and began writing on it with his forehead furrowed in focus. A half hour later my cast was just as black as it was lime green. He'd covered it in "I love you" and "you're amazing" and other such things, filling the few gaps in the words with hearts and music notes. Overall, I had to admit it actually looked pretty good. I'd always loved his handwriting.

"You have an eye for design," I said when he'd finally declared it finished, capping the marker.

"Yeah well I've picked up a thing or two from being around you all these years," he said with a shrug, but he was trying not to look pleased. He tossed the marker back onto my nightstand and laid down with a heavy sigh. "You're really okay, aren't you?" he asked and I could hear the concern in his voice. "I know you've said you are, but I know you and your tendency for denial."

I nudged him indignantly and muttered "you're one to talk," but it wasn't much of a gesture since I was too tired to really put much force in it. "A little sore but not bad," I said honestly so he would get off my case about it. "Mostly now I'm just tired."

"Yeah, me too," he said and reached over to put his glasses on the bedside table, simultaneously flicking off the lamp.

I made to lay down but then realised that laying the way I normally did, on my side curled against Artie, would be putting my weight on my injured arm. I frowned. "I'm not snubbing you, just so you know," I said and was rewarded with a faint smile in the dark before I laid down on my other side, facing away from him.

"Were you scared?" The question was so quiet that I barely heard it.

I bit the inside of my cheek thoughtfully, but I knew there was no point or reason in lying to him. "Yeah," I agreed. "Not so much afterwards, but right when it happened I was."

"Me too." It wasn't a split second later that I heard him shifting behind me, and his arm snaked carefully around my stomach. He pressed his chest into my back and I felt him nuzzling his head against mine. I could tell by the way he kept tightening his arm around me, his hand fisting in the sheets, that his balance was off. I propped myself up slightly so I could move the arm I was laying on and reached down, gripping the leg of his pyjama pants and pulling his leg over mine so his weight fell against my back. He murmured what might have been a "thanks" but it was so quiet I couldn't be sure.

I privately revelled in the warmth of his body around mine. I'd already decided I wasn't going to tell him about that split second in which I'd wondered if I would ever see him again, but it definitely made me appreciate this feeling that much more. Being in his arms, breathing in his familiar smell and feeling his steady heartbeat against my back, made me feel safe and all of the remaining fears I'd had from the car accident eased away.

"I like this," Artie breathed against my shoulder after a while. "It makes me feel like – like I'm shielding you or something. Keeping you safe. Protecting you."

"Artie," I said with a smile, "you've been protecting me since you tricked me into pushing your chair around so it was harder for the jocks to get me."

Artie laughed hesitantly. "I don't know what you're talking about," he said but I could feel the warmth from his face growing. He laughed again, more genuinely this time, and then pressed a kiss against my neck. "Love you."

"Love you too, Clark Kent."

That was the next time Artie had been broken, and I realised that sometimes all people really need is a little sense of peace and control to combat their fears.


	19. Hope

The next time Tina was broken, I thought that maybe there were some dreams that couldn't be achieved.

It was mid-autumn and honestly, our lives were on such a dramatic upswing we should have been expecting something to happen. Apart from Tina's car accident, things had been almost too perfect since getting married. Early in the spring I was offered a job with an architectural company for when I graduated, and at the end of spring when I got my diploma I was hired. It paid a lot better than my other job had, and it was nice to not have to worry as much about finances. On our first anniversary, we decided to start looking for a house with the idea of possibly expanding our family.

When I came home from work that day, I was really excited. I'd been talking to a co-worker and he'd told me about a house near his neighbourhood that might work well for us. He promised to get me a flyer and the realtor's number, and I wanted to get home and tell Tina everything he'd told me about it.

I wasn't sure quite how, but the moment I got inside I could tell there was something wrong. The apartment was quiet and for a moment I thought maybe she was out. Whenever she was home alone she had music playing, because she didn't like quiet. Curiously, I pulled out my phone but she hadn't called or texted that she would be gone. I looked up again and that when I noticed the curled figure on the bed.

"Tee, you asleep?" I asked quietly, rolling across the apartment to the bed. She was curled up in a ball on her side, fast asleep, and when I got closer I could see that she'd clearly been crying. Worried, I reached out to wake her when I noticed a crumpled sheet of paper half-hidden behind her arms. I tentatively pulled it out, trying hard not to jostle her, and smoothed it out on my lap.

Honestly, I half expected it to be something from her parents. They hadn't had any contact with her since they'd returned her wedding announcement, and after that day Tina had all but washed her hands of them. I knew she still thought about them sometimes, but she had seemed a lot brighter since she'd thrown away their returned invitation and I was honestly impressed by just how well she had moved on. Her strength and ability to cope were enviable, really. And it only seemed fitting that now that she was so comfortably moved on that her parents would decide to do something stupid to scramble that up.

However, of all the things I might have expected, I was definitely not expecting to see a hospital letterhead. For probably a full minute, I just stared at the insignia and the standardised information beside it. Why was Tina holding a paper from the hospital?

I nervously let my eyes drift lower. There was a heading "Patient Information" and beside it, "Tina Isabel Abrams." Beneath that were all the usual things; date of birth, address, phone number, etc. I was still trying to grasp onto the fact that Tina had gone to the hospital at some point. When was it? I glanced up to the top again and saw that it had today's date on it.

Steeling myself, I sucked in a breath and looked down at the body of the page. When I finished reading I felt all the breath rush out of me. Sure I must have read something wrong, I ran my eyes over it again and again but none of the words magically rearranged themselves no matter how many times I read them.

The sound of a shuddery inhale made me look up at the bed again and Tina was awake, watching me. Her eyes were still red and puffy, and her chin was quivering. She curled herself into a tighter ball, staring at me over the edge of her knees. Before my brain could put itself back together enough to come up with something to say, she gasped out, "I'm sorry."

I watched for a second longer as she slowly fell apart, and then suddenly reality clicked into place. "Shh, Tee, c'mere," I said and she crawled off the bed and into my lap. When I closed my arms around her she completely collapsed. I'm pretty sure that if I wasn't still in shock I might have broken down at that point too, but instead I focused myself on calming her down and keeping her together.

"I'm so sorry," she choked into my shoulder miserably.

"Don't be," I said softly. "I just – Why didn't you talk to me about this?"

"I thought I was being silly," she admitted. "I didn't want to make a big deal about it and then find out I was wrong and feel stupid for it. Only I wasn't wrong and –" She broke off as her sobs got heavier again. "I just kept thinking about it, because we've never really been careful about it and nothing ever happened. And then after we got married you had that test and they said it might take a lot of trying but it would work. But we've been together for years and nothing ever happened and I couldn't help but think there must be something wrong with me. And the doctor – I'm the reason we can't get pregnant."

I held her closer as she dissolved into tears again. My head was reeling. The more I thought about it, the more I should have seen it coming. It was true, we hadn't ever been too cautious, from the very beginning. In fact we were pretty reckless. I'd always thought it was because of me that nothing ever happened, and then after I'd been tested and they told me that my condition shouldn't be too much of a problem I had just assumed that it was luck and fate that had prevented it. But I had never, _ever_ , considered that she might have problems too.

"Hey, it's okay," I said as gently as I could, still trying to grasp onto some shred of coherent thought. "Just talk to me now, Tee. Tell me." I glanced down at the paper where I'd dropped it on the floor. "It didn't say it could never happen, did it?"

Tina shook her head against my shoulder. "But he said it would be really, really hard and there were no guarantees that it will happen," she said and I winced because I could hear her heart breaking a little more with every word. "And I want it to, so bad. I want to have a family, I want us to have a family, and now they're telling me we might not get that."

"Hey, don't talk like that," I chided her softly. "It'll happen. Trust me. We'll make sure of it. There's still that chance. We'll just keep trying. It'll happen when it's supposed to." She was still crying, but it was a little less hysterical now. "C'mon, Tee, we've never let anything stop us before. You and me, we get through everything, remember?"

I was relieved when she made a noise that I could tell was supposed to be a laugh. "I don't understand how you're always so optimistic," she mumbled.

"It's not hard for me when I've got you," I said. Tina snorted. "Okay, I know that sounded completely corny, but I mean it. As long as we're still together, I know we'll get through anything. We always have before, I don't know why the pattern would change now."

She felt so frail in my arms, shaking against me even though her crying had quieted, and I was afraid if I tried to shift her at all she would break. It would be a lie if I said I wasn't shaken by the news too, but I really was confident that it was something we could deal with. If we could compensate for every other out of the ordinary thing that had happened to us over the years, we could handle this too.

"This doesn't change anything," I said slowly and carefully, making sure she heard me. "We always knew this would be hard for us, that was a given. We'll just keep trying."

"I'm sorry," she said. "I know how much you want this."

"You apologise too much," I answered and I think she might have smiled against my shoulder at that. "I do want a family, with you. And we'll have it. Nothing stops us, right?"

"It's just not fair, all these things always happen to us," she grumbled. "Why is it always us? Can't we have a break every once in a while? It would be nice if just for once we didn't have to fight for everything."

"Ah, where's the fun in that?" I asked and chuckled, and I was relieved when she made an amused noise too. "We're fighters, Tee, it's just who we are. From day one both of us has had things to deal with and get over, and that's why we do so well together. We're sort of a Dynamic Duo."

"Which one's the sidekick?" she asked and I smiled just at the fact that she'd relaxed enough to make a joke.

"Oh me, totally," I said instantly. "I'm smart enough to know you're the boss." She laughed and for a moment we just sat in the quiet, both of us wrapped up in our own thoughts.

"Do you really think it'll happen for us?" she asked and there was so much hopefulness in her voice that I forgot all thoughts about her delicateness and hugged her closer. Thankfully she wasn't as fragile as she looked because she tightened her arms around me too.

"I'm positive," I said into her hair.

We sat like that for a while in another, easier silence. She was still anxious, I could feel it in the tension in her shoulders, and honestly I was a little nervous too. As sure as I was that things would work out in the end, there was always that cursed little voice in the back of my head saying what if. It didn't matter though, because I knew we could deal with this. We might have to look into fertility treatments or something, but we could do it.

I noticed that Tina's arms were loosening and I smiled. "Don't fall asleep, Tee," I said, shrugging the shoulder her head was resting on. "You don't want to fall asleep on me while I'm in the chair. Doesn't end well, remember?"

Tina laughed. "I wasn't asleep," she said and then sat up. She brushed a hand over her cheeks to dry them, but I almost let out a breath of relief when I saw that she looked calm again. "And yes, I remember what happened last time," she added with a smile.

"Unfortunately so do I," I said and she nudged me with her elbow playfully. "I had a very painful encounter with the floor when you threw off the balance."

"Well fine then," she said, pretending to huff as she climbed out of my lap. She sat down on the bed again, tucking her legs underneath her, and stared at me for a while. I was a little confused by the thoughtful, determined expression on her face, but the moment I opened my mouth to make a wise-ass comment about the staring, she covered it with hers.

"That was unexpected," I said when she finally pulled back. "Awesome. But unexpected."

She just smirked at me again and then scooted back further onto the bed, raising an eyebrow at me. "Care to join me?" she asked.

"After that kiss, I'd be a moron to say no," I answered, making her laugh again. She opened her mouth to respond, smiling mischievously, and I shook my head. "Be nice," I pouted, knowing exactly what she was going to say. "Or I'll stay right here."

Tina just snorted. "You will?" she asked sceptically, simultaneously pulling the elastic out of her hair and shaking it free.

I sighed, rolling my eyes. "You don't play fair," I said, shaking my head, but I couldn't stop smiling when I parked closer to the bed and pulled myself up. When I had finally gotten myself settled beside her I was a little surprised when she hugged me again, and then leaned back to give me a soft, tender kiss.

"Thank you," she said, leaning her forehead against mine and not letting go of the sides of my face. I wrapped my arms more securely around her waist, both to comfort her and to keep myself from falling over backwards. It's ridiculously difficult to stay in a sitting position when you can't feel your ass.

"What for now?" I asked with a smile, but gentle so she'd know I wasn't teasing her.

Tina smiled too. "For always being the strong one," she clarified.

I laughed a little sarcastically. "Well I don't know about  _always,_ " I said.

"Okay, well at least for being the strong one when I need you," she amended, looking through her lashes at me and even though she was smiling still, she was completely serious.

"I'll always be whatever you need me to be," I promised. Suddenly her smile got mischievous and I couldn't help but mirror it. "Oh yeah, I totally think I can be that," I said in reply to the playful question in her eyes. She just laughed and then tilted her face forward to kiss me again, making both of us fall back onto the mattress.

That was the next time Tina had been broken, and we learned that fighting for the things you really want is half the pleasure. Oh and that sometimes fate just likes to screw with you: five months later she got pregnant.


	20. Third-Party

The next time Artie was broken, we found out that sometimes you need an impartial mediator to help with your problems.

It was the beginning of autumn and I was six months pregnant. Finding out I was pregnant had been something of a miracle for us. The doctors had told me I had a very slim chance of getting pregnant, and between myself and Artie it didn't seem likely it would ever happen. We'd agreed to keep trying a little longer, and then after six months we'd gone in to talk to the doctors about other options only to have them tell us I was already about three weeks pregnant.

If it weren't for the fact that I was so ecstatic about being pregnant, the actually pregnancy would have been miserable. I hated being so sick all the time and it seemed like I hardly had the energy to stay moving for any more than six hours at a time. The doctors said it was normal, that the pregnancy was just taking a heavy toll on my body, but I still felt like a sloth when I spent what time I wasn't at work lounging on the couch. And worst of all were the mood swings; even I could tell I was sort of insane, which of course only made me a little crazier. It was a relief Artie's such a patient, laid back guy, because I had no idea how he could put up with me.

Our apartment was slowly filling up with half-packed cardboard boxes in preparation for the move. We'd bought our new house two months before I got pregnant, but we'd had to wait for the accommodations to be built for Artie; widening doorways, lowering countertops, redoing the floors in hardwood, things like that. Enlarging and refitting the master bathroom to be handicap accessible was the part that was taking the longest. Most of the work was nearly done though, and they said we'd be able to move in before the baby was born.

I was woken up in the middle of the night by the baby rolling over. By then I was so used to the feeling that I just laid there, keeping my eyes closed and enjoying the sensation. It was a little uncomfortable to get kicked in the internal organs, but there was something really great in feeling the movement. Made it all a little more real in a way. Even if it did prevent me from going back to sleep.

I smiled a little when I realised there was a familiar hand resting on my stomach. It wasn't all that uncommon for him to fall asleep with his hand there, because he liked to feel the baby kicking. He started rubbing his thumb back and forth over my skin and after a few seconds the baby held still.

"Hey little baby." The whisper made me smile again. I opened my eyes just enough to make out his shape in the dark through my lashes. He was laying on his stomach, scooted down the mattress a little so his head was almost level with my stomach, and the arm that wasn't touching me was tucked underneath his head like a pillow. Even in the dark I could tell he was smiling faintly, and there was something bright about his eyes.

"I can't believe you're going to be here soon," Artie whispered, his eyes fixed on the arc his thumb was brushing above my belly button. "Eight more weeks. Fifty-four days. But don't tell your mum I'm counting, or she'll make fun of me again." I was really glad he was too focused on my stomach to notice I was smiling again. This was just way too cute for me to want to interrupt.

"I've been thinking about what it'll be like when you're here. What it will be like to be a  _dad_." He said the last word slowly, like it was some foreign word he was still trying to master. I also didn't miss the hint of awe underneath the deliberateness. "I never really thought I'd be here, because of what I am. Before I met your mum, I didn't really think I had much of a chance of having a wife or a family. Again, don't tell her I said that; she gets mad at me when I say things like that.

"But she gave me hope. She's good at that. She's sort of a master with all things hope-related. You're lucky to have her looking out for you. She'll be a great parent. Me, on the other hand, I don't know about. I'm not – I don't know if I can be a really good dad to you." Artie stopped and sighed, and his thumb quit moving.

"I've been thinking about this being a dad thing ever since we found out you were in there. Really, almost non-stop. About what being a dad is about, and about all the things that dads are supposed to do for their kids. I thought a lot about all the things my dad did for me when I was little. He showed me how to do a lot of things; ride a bike, swim, play sports, stuff like that. I remember my favourite thing to do as a kid was race my dad across the yard. He showed me the right way to move my legs, to make me go faster. And I've realised I can't help you with those things, not the way a dad should be able to."

Artie broke off for a second to take a ragged breath and his thumb started moving again, faster than before. I wanted to reach over and hold him and let him know that what he was thinking was ridiculous, but I was transfixed by his speech, in a sort of morbid curiosity way, and I held myself back. He took another couple shaky breaths, and I saw his over-bright eyes close before he started again.

"I don't even know how I'll be able to take care of you while you're a little baby. If I'm holding you, I can't move. I won't even be able to carry you around the house until you're big enough to hold yourself up, and even then it'll be risky. I won't even be able to move you around in the same room. It's not fair – to me or your mum or you. I –" Artie trailed off with a sigh that sounded torn between misery and frustration.

Just as I made to finally reach out for him, he started talking again and I froze. "I love you. I really,  _really_  do. You're my little miracle and I'm never taking that for granted. And I'm going to try as hard as I can, but I'm sorry that I can't be the dad you deserve."

Artie slipped his hand off my stomach, bringing it toward his face and rubbing at his eyes. He was sucking back sobs and turned his head to bury his face in the mattress, muffling the noise. I winced at the sight, my chest feeling really tight. He had never shown me the slightest doubt that he was ready to be a dad. I'd thought he might be even more prepared for it than I was. Never had I considered that he might not believe in himself. I didn't know how he couldn't understand that he'd be an amazing dad, but somehow he didn't and he was tearing himself up over it.

He pushed himself onto his back and sat up, starting to inch himself carefully towards the edge of the mattress. I smiled a little because I knew he was trying to not wake me up, but it was a bittersweet smile because I also knew he was leaving the room because he was crying and didn't want the noise to bother me.

"Artie?" I asked and I managed to sound convincingly like I'd just woken up. I figured it would be better to not let him know I'd overheard what he'd said.

"It's okay. Just go back to sleep, Tee," he said gently, his voice still thick.

"Where you going?" I pressed, propping myself up on my elbow a little.

"Just over to the couch," he said just as carefully. "I can't sleep, I was going to watch some TV. I didn't mean to wake you, go back to sleep."

"I can't sleep either," I said and this much at least was true. "Your baby is playing Mortal Kombat with my kidneys." Artie laughed quietly. Nothing works for that quite as well as a cheesy '90s video game reference. He's still such a dork. "Come lay back down with me," I said, making it sound more like a question as I patted the spot beside me.

It seemed like Artie debated with himself for a minute, and in his profile against the light from the window I watched him chewing on his bottom lip. Finally he nodded and pushed himself back into the spot beside me. He laid down on his back, folding his arms behind his head and staring up at the ceiling. I could tell that his eyes were still a little watery, and there was an odd catch in his breathing every few inhales, but for the most part he seemed to have himself under control.

"Eight weeks," I said quietly and despite his mood I saw Artie smile just a little. "I'm kind of nervous."

"Yeah," Artie agreed distractedly. "It's going to be…" He trailed off, his expression thoughtfully. Apparently he couldn't come up with the proper adjective to describe it.

"Yeah," I agreed and the corner of his mouth twitched upward again. "I'm not too worried though, we'll be fine." Artie hummed lightly and moved his head in a shallow nod, but I was pretty sure he was humouring me instead of actually believing it. "You're going to be a great dad, you know."

At this Artie raised his eyebrows and turned his head to the side, looking at me questioningly. "How do you figure?" he asked and there was a note that was equal parts hope and desperation underneath the genuine curiosity.

"When I was really little, do you know what the one thing I really loved about my dad was?"

Artie snorted. "That sweeping sense of relief when he left the room?" he asked innocently. I rolled my eyes and shoved him in the side. "Ow. Okay, sorry, that was uncalled for," he relented. "But honestly, I should warn you that comparing me to your father could be extremely detrimental to my self-esteem."

"Would you just shut up and let me finish?" I said in exasperation. Artie sighed and nodded, but I noticed he argued with me a lot less now that I was pregnant. He was a smart enough guy to know not to test the pregnancy hormones. "When I was really little, I always looked up to my dad. He was such a successful person, and he just looked impressive. He had this power about him, this confidence, that when he talked people actually listened to him. He never held back his opinions, and when he spoke them people heard and even if they didn't agree they respected that he said them. I was in complete awe of that. He was an inspiration to me."

"Hmm, so that's why you became a public speaker," Artie said and I didn't miss the sarcasm.

I pushed him again. "No, that's why I've never been afraid of expressing my opinions," I corrected and Artie finally looked interested. "Even when I was afraid of talking and letting people get close to me, it never stopped me from showing people what I thought. So I wore skirts with chains and fishnets, and flipped off my chemistry teacher, and got different coloured hair extensions, and became best friends with this really dorky guy no matter what everyone else said about it."

Artie removed one of his hands from under his hand and twisted one of my blue streaks through his fingers affectionately. "Well I appreciate it, apart from the dork comment, but I'm still not seeing the connection," he said, letting his hand drop again.

"What is it that you remember the best about your dad from when you were little?" I asked rhetorically. "Was it him being able to run fast or was it that he showed you how you could do anything?"

For a minute Artie pulled his lip between his teeth again, staring up at the ceiling. "He never gave up at anything," he said slowly, "no matter how bad he sucked at it. If it was something he wanted to do, he would keep doing it even if was awful at it, and he never got discouraged. And after the accident, he was the one who kept our family together. We were all so messed up, especially me, but he didn't give up on us. When I was so upset about not being able to run and play anymore, he's the one who told me the world wasn't over and there were other things I could still do. He dug his old guitar out of the closet and would sit around the house playing, and he made it sound so cool that I realised it was something I wanted to do. That's how I got hooked on music."

"And how you learned to keep trying when things are hard," I added and Artie smiled and nodded. "Because he inspired you." At this he took his eyes from the ceiling and looked at me again, and I saw something lighting up in his gaze. "Just like my dad inspired me to never be afraid to express myself. That's the thing that dads are really good for. And that's why I know you'll be a really great dad, because I can't think of anyone who is more inspiring than you are." His eyes were shiny with tears again and I saw his chin quiver slightly, but he smiled.

"You really think so?" he asked.

I smiled and placed a hand on my stomach. "She is going to be so proud to have you for a daddy," I said assuredly.

"He," Artie said confidently. We'd agreed not to find out whether it was a boy or girl until the birth, and while we'd talked about what we'd like it to be and what to name it, we'd never actually made a point of saying what we thought it was. I raised an eyebrow. "Trust me, it's a boy."

"How would you know?" I asked. I honestly got the impression that it was a girl. I didn't know why I thought that, it was just something that felt right. Maybe a sort of maternal instinct or something.

Artie shrugged. "I just know," he answered, and he sounded completely positive of his guess. His eyes travelled down to my bulging stomach, and he smiled again, really softly. "That's our little boy."

I didn't even want to argue with him when he looked that happy. Instead I just scooted myself closer to him, curling up at his side again as best as I could with the belly between us. He didn't seem to mind as the arm closest to me wrapped around my shoulders. I reached across him to grab his other hand, pulling it toward me.

"Leave your hand there," I said, placing his palm against my stomach. "It calms her down." Artie seemed a little sceptical and disbelieving about that, but it took less than a minute from the first swipe of his thumb against my skin before the kicking stopped. "See," I said, a little smugly, "she loves you already."

Artie just stared at his hand against my stomach with wide eyes, a delicate grin on his face. I smiled and snuggled myself against him, seizing the reprieve from the movement to try and fall asleep again.

"Hey little buddy," Artie whispered and I opened my eyes again to see that he was smiling mischievously, his eyes on my stomach. "Tell your mum she's really bad at pretending she wasn't eavesdropping." I grinned unashamedly when Artie glanced up at me with a raised eyebrow, but then winced a little because the baby had just kicked me again.

"Oh I can tell already, this is a Daddy's kid," I said, rubbing the spot while Artie tried not to laugh. He kissed my forehead and then started rubbing his thumb against my stomach until the baby settled down again and I was able to actually sleep.

That was the next time Artie'd been broken, and it turned out our unborn baby made a perfect mediator. Even if he (or she) always agreed with Artie.


	21. Prayers

The next time Tina was broken, I decided I was  _so_  done with hospitals.

It was early November and I was still in complete shock as I got out of my car. I had been at work when Tina had called me and I could still hear her frantic voice in my head. I had been fighting against the nerves on the entire drive up to the hospital, going through all the rational explanations to the situation in my head. Once I had convinced myself that this was not something scary, I felt just a little bit of excitement. And then I would remember the fear in her voice and the happiness would be dampened again.

The receptionist gave me directions to the room and when I got there Tina was lying in bed, and our next-door neighbour was talking to her soothingly. "Artie," Tina said before she'd even turned to see me, and I was, not for the first time, blown away by how she was so good at catching the faintest noises my chair made even over any other background noises, sounds that other people didn't even notice. It was a talent she had honed to an unnatural perfection over the years, and often gave people the impression that she could  _sense_  me coming instead of hear me. Jack turned it into a comic book joke by calling it her "Artie-sense." I'd had to explain to her what it meant when he asked her if it was tingling.

"Hey, Tee, how you feeling?" I asked, trying to sound casual. In way of an answer she forced a shaky smile but didn't say anything. "Thanks for bringing her up, Trish," I added, glancing up at our neighbour. "There's no way I could have gotten home from work and then all the way back up here fast enough."

"It's no problem," Trish replied easily. "That's what I'm here for." I smiled gratefully. Trish was a stay-at-home mum who'd offered to lend Tina a hand now that she was out on maternity leave while I was at work, in the chance that something happened. She squeezed Tina's hand and touched my shoulder on her way out of the door.

"Tee, what happened?" I asked, moving the rest of the distance to the bed.

"The contractions started coming really close together," she said and as if proving the point I actually saw her stomach muscles seize. She winced and when she looked down at me she looked scared again. "There's something wrong. I can tell."

"Well you're a little early," I said, "but they said anytime after thirty-four weeks was fine."

"No, it's something else," she said insistently. One hand rested on her contracting stomach while the other reached for me. I tugged off a glove and took her hand, and felt her close her fingers around my hand tightly. "Artie, there's something wrong. Our baby. What if –"

"Shh, don't start that stuff," I said, calm but firm. "We're not doing what ifs. It'll be okay." There was another contraction and I winced along with her as she tried to crush my fingers. When she opened her eyes again there were tears in them and her panic was plain on her face. Before either of us could say anything the doctor came into the room to check on her.

The doctor looked a little concerned and he came up to talk to us. The way he explained it, her body was trying to induce labour without actually being ready for it and without the baby being ready either. I didn't actually understand a lot of what he was trying to say, except that something really was wrong. He said they would try some sort of medication that was supposed to make her dilate, but if it didn't start working quickly the unnatural labour could really hurt both Tina and especially the baby.

The moment the doctor left after injecting her with the medicine, she looked at me and I saw she was crying. "I'm sorry," she said. I tried to cut her off but she just kept talking, ignoring my protest. "They said it was risky for me to have kids. I should have known there was another reason. This is it. I can't even do it right and it's hurting the baby and –"

"Tina," I said loudly and she let her words trail off into sobs. "Don't do that to yourself, please. It will be okay." I didn't think it was important to tell her that while I was being calm and strong for her, inside I was sending every possible prayer I could skyward, resisting the urge to reach for the miniature St. Jude medallion that was stitched into the back inside of the glove in my lap.

I kept talking to her as composedly as I could, trying to keep her distracted from what was going on. Every time she was hit with another contraction she would make a pained gasp and tighten her grip around my hand, and I could tell that each fresh wave made her fear grow. It had only been ten minutes when the doctor came back in to check again and this time his expression was a little grim.

"She's not dilating, we've got to prep her for surgery," he said and I felt Tina's hand grip harder against mine, a scared noise escaping her.

"Surgery?" I asked faintly, trying to get answers. Having answers made truths easier to comprehend, and all of this was coming so fast there wasn't much I'd made sense of in the last half hour.

"Emergency caesarean," the doctor said with a nod. "Her body isn't going through the stages of labour correctly. We've got to get the baby out before it seriously hurts either of them."

I felt like I'd been hit in the chest, but I instantly turned to Tina. She looked so scared I thought she might be on the verge of fainting. "This surgery, it'll make everything okay though, right?" I asked desperately when the doctor had signalled a couple nurses into the room and they started preparing to roll the bed out of the room.

The doctor met my eyes and I saw his answer there before he said anything. "It should," he said vaguely, but what he meant was 'it's the only shot you've got.' I nodded weakly.

They started moving the bed and Tina held my hand tighter. "No, don't go," she said frantically. Her eyes were wide, or as wide as her eyes are capable of getting, and her voice was very near hysterical.

"Tee, it's going to be okay," I said as soothingly as I could.

"Please, Artie," she said and her voice broke. "I can't do this alone. Please."

Nodding, I pressed a kiss to her hand. "Don't worry, honey, I'll be there," I said and apparently I sounded confident enough in this because she nodded and let me slip my hand out of hers. The nurses pushed the bed out of the room and I rolled up next to the doctor before he could leave. "I need to be there."

"We generally don't allow people in the operating room," he said with a sympathetic frown.

"I won't get in the way," I said assuredly. "I'll stay up by her head. If my chair is too bulky I can transfer to a different chair and you can move mine out of the way." His frown hadn't eased but I could see something softening in his eyes. "Please, I've been there for her through everything since we were thirteen years old. She's more scared than she's ever been; I can't leave her alone now. Please."

The doctor stared at me thoughtfully for a long moment and then he nodded. "I'll see what we can work out," he said and then gestured for me to follow him. I felt a wave of relief sweeping through me when I grabbed my wheels and pushed myself after him. Fifteen minutes later I was being pushed into the operating room with my clothes covered in a pair of overly-large medical scrubs.

Tina had already been watching the door when we came in, and I knew she'd been waiting for me. Even though she still looked terrified, I saw the relief in her eyes and I smiled. The doctor and a nurse helped me to move from my wheelchair into a different chair, because it was higher and I couldn't quite get myself up. The nice part was the extra height meant that now my head was actually above the edge of the mattress and I could see Tina's face without having to tilt my head back. They tucked the chair up as close to the bed as they could get it and I was able to rest my one arm on the bed without having to lean forward.

"Told you I'd be here," I said, taking her hand again.

Even though she was crying still, she gave me a faint smile. "Thank you," she breathed, so quietly I had to read it on her lips because I hadn't actually heard it. She gasped aloud at another contraction. "Oh God, it hurts so much," she said when it eased up.

"It'll be over soon," I said, although I had no idea if that was true. After checking that I wouldn't slip if I let go of the chair with my other hand, I reached over and pushed her hair away from her sweaty forehead. She leaned her face into my touch, so I left my hand where it was.

I didn't pay any attention to the actual surgery. I heard the doctor and nurses talking, saying different medical terms that I wasn't sure I wanted to understand, and once out of the corner of my eye I'd caught a glimpse of a scalpel around the partition they'd hung above her stomach to keep Tina from watching. Instead I spent the time trying to keep her calm, keeping her focused on me and not what was happening on the other side of that little green curtain.

At one point I'd noticed the doctor's voice sounded anxious, and I tried to hide the fear it sparked in me by pulling Tina's hand to my face and kissing it. My heart was pounding to the point of being painful, but she didn't need to know that. I had to be the strong one again. I blocked off the words that the doctor was saying, not really sure I wanted to know what was happening but needing to know at the same time.

"Artie," Tina said breathlessly and I lifted my eyes to meet hers. "Love you forever, right?"

"Forever and ever, no matter what," I promised, awkwardly holding myself up with my elbows on the mattress so I could lean forward and kiss her. It was straining my arms to stay like that, but I rested my forehead against her burning one. The sound of her ragged, uneven breathing made me scared, knowing it meant she was starting to panic again, and I did the only thing I could think of to help her find a steady rhythm again.

" _When I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Mary comes to me, speaking words of wisdom, let it be…_ "

I sang it so quietly under my breath that I was sure if my mouth hadn't been so close to her ear she wouldn't have heard. She squeezed my hand in acknowledgement and by the time I hit the chorus she was timing her breathing with the tempo of the music.

Midway through the second verse there was a high scream and my voice stuck in my throat. For a moment I didn't dare lift my head to look, just in case it shattered the illusion and it turned out I'd only imagined in. Then I finally pulled back, easing myself carefully back onto the chair, and looked over. Two of the nurses had taken a bundle out of the room with them, and the sound of the crying died away with their absence, while the doctor was still busy behind the curtain.

Tina's grip on my hand tightened with every second that passed. I lost the feeling in my fingers about forty-two seconds before one of the nurses finally came back in. "It looks like your baby is fine," she said and Tina's hand relaxed slightly. I winced as the circulation in my fingers made them tingle. "He's being looked over, just to make sure nothing's wrong, but he looks perfectly healthy."

I think at that point I said thank you about four times and started crying the second the nurse walked away. Tina had let her head fall back into the pillow, breathing a heavy sigh, but she smiled at me. "You were right," she said and I raised an eyebrow. "She said 'he.' It's a boy."

I couldn't help but laugh, and I pushed myself forward to kiss her again. "It's a boy," I echoed.

The doctor finished with the stitches, which is what I learned he was doing behind the curtain while we'd been talking, and not long after we were relocated to the room she'd been in before. As soon as we were alone Tina started getting scared again. "Should it take this long? What if there's something wrong? I hope he's okay. When will we get to see him?" I gave up trying to calm her down, because she wasn't actually listening to any of the answers I tried to give her anyway.

It hadn't even been ten minutes when the doctor showed up, and he smiled at us. "You've got yourself a tough little boy," he said. "Four and a half weeks early, and he is one-hundred-percent healthy."

"Can we see him?" I asked hopefully, but before the doctor could answer a nurse came into the room, pushing one of those clear plastic buckets on a silver stand. I sat up straighter because I knew what they were. I'd seen them before when my little sister and my nephews had been born. The nurse stopped it beside the bed and she scooped the squirming bundle of blankets out of it. Tina's eyes were bright as the nurse laid the baby in her arms. I propped myself on my elbows on the edge of the mattress, and she tilted slightly so I could see.

He was red from crying, but in the patches where that was fading away I could see he had skin that was just slightly less tanned than Tina's. The little patch of hair on the top of his head was dark, and when he opened his wide eyes they were dark, almost navy blue. I just stared in awe.

"Did you have a name chosen for him?" the doctor asked suddenly, and I looked up in surprise when Tina said yes. When I raised an eyebrow at her, she smiled and, by way of answer, hummed a bar of " _Let It Be._ " I let out a quiet laugh and then glanced back at the doctor.

"Paul," I answered. "Paul Arthur Abrams." The doctor glanced between us in confusion, probably trying to figure out how I'd understood that, but he nodded and opened the folder in his arm. Turning away from him, I looked back at Tina and our baby again. He was staring up at her with those huge eyes, and she had an almost blindingly radiant smile on her face.

That was the next time Tina had been broken, and all of a sudden there was six-pounds-and-nine-ounces of other person that could fix her breaks.


	22. Parenting

The next time Artie was broken, it was actually because someone else was broken.

We learned very quickly that having children made time pass a lot faster than it used to. It seemed like only months ago that Paul was born, but it was actually nearing on six years. Three years after he'd been born, we'd added John Benjamin, a little boy who looked even more like an Abrams than his older brother, to our family. It was now two years since then, and I was four months in with our third baby. We had once again opted not to find out the gender, but Artie was extremely confident it was a girl this time. And he was so excited by that possibility that I hoped it was too just for his sake. Well, that and I  _really_  wanted a girl. Brittany and Mike had brought their little girls over a couple times and they were absolutely adorable. Not to mention it would be nice to finally have another girl in our house full of boys.

I also loved to see how much Artie's parents doted on our boys. Growing up I'd never really had grandparents. I'd only met my mom's parents once when I was four, and they'd died not long after that. Dad's parents lived in South Korea, which despite my heritage I had never actually visited. But Judy and Ben were really great about taking care of the boys when we needed a break, and they always came to Paul's school programs and showed up for birthday parties. It was a whole new side of family I'd never known before, and I fell in love with it a little more every day.

Even though we'd both been nervous, paranoid wrecks about it at first, Artie and I turned out to be pretty good parents, if I say so myself. We worked well as a team, which definitely helped out a lot. Artie was an amazing dad, just like I'd told him he would be. The boys loved him, especially Paul, and after the curious questions about why Daddy never stands up like Mummy does stopped they didn't seem to pay any heed to the chair. Except when John was feeling lazy and would insist Daddy "drive" him around the house.

And because he's Artie and he never stops trying, he actually found ways to do a lot of the things he thought he'd never be able to do with the kids. Once he'd figured out a way to be able to lay the babies on his lap where they would be safe while he moved around, he'd become just as efficient at taking care of them as me, some days even more so. Last summer he'd helped me teach Paul how to swim; we went to the public pool, and Artie laid on his stomach at the edge of the pool, holding Paul's arms to keep him above the surface while he kicked to tread water. It wasn't much, but they both laughed and enjoyed themselves and even after Paul went out with me to learn to actually swim, it didn't take long before he wanted to go back and swim with Daddy more.

It was summertime and I had gone shopping with Mercedes and Brittany. Artie was home with the boys, probably teaching Paul to throw a baseball since the boy'd just developed a sudden interest in the sport after Grandpa Ben showed him pictures of Artie playing it as a kid. Paul's such a Daddy's boy, always had been since before he was even born.

Our girl time at the mall was a lot of fun. Mercedes showed off her engagement ring, gushing endlessly about her fiancé. She'd been friends with the guy, Parker, the lead singer from Haverbrook, since they'd met during our sophomore year, but they'd just started dating about two years ago when he got back from college. Brittany kept asking confused questions about why Mercedes tended to make a lot of hand gestures while talking, no matter how many times we explained it to her.

We were outside a toy shop because Brittany had gotten distracted by one of those robotic furry puppies in the display case. She was considering buying one for Madison, but Mercedes and I both knew the little girl would have to share the toy with her mum. Just as Brittany made the decision to get one, my phone rang. I recognised the ringtone and answered, "Hey Artie."

Artie's frantic voice was not exactly the sort of response I'd expected. I could tell he was shaken as he talked in a rush and at the end of it I immediately said I was on my way and tucked the phone back into my bag.

"What's the matter?" Mercedes asked concernedly. Apparently I wasn't hiding my emotions very well.

"Did someone eat all your cookies again?" Brittany asked, looking downcast at the thought. Mercedes raised an eyebrow at her but I smiled faintly at the blonde.

"I'm really sorry guys but I need to go," I said and then remembered that I didn't have a car. Brittany had picked me up. "Can one of you give me a ride? Paul's gotten hurt, they're taking him up to the hospital."

"Why didn't you say so, girl?" Mercedes said and then instantly threaded her arm through mine, steering us towards the exit. Brittany promised the animatronic puppy in the case that she'd come back for it, and then jogged to join us. Despite my worries, I couldn't help but smile at her. She'd grown up a lot since high school, and she was actually a really great mother, but I was pretty sure she'd have the personality of a four-year-old for her whole life.

The way Mercedes drove to the hospital made me both very nervous and extremely grateful all of the police seemed to be in different parts of town. Her driving had always been a little scary, but especially so when she was in a hurry. She hit me when I tried to apologise for interrupting our girls' day, and told me if I said it again then she'd cut me. I was still rubbing the sore spot in my shoulder when we got to the hospital.

Finding my family in the emergency waiting room wasn't difficult. The moment I walked into the room there was a shout of "Mummy" and I looked over to see John sliding down off Artie's lap. He ran toward me and I scooped him up, settling him on my hip.

"Hey Johnny," I said, kissing his cheek. As much as Paul was Artie's boy, John was more mine. Paul was the bright, optimistic, extroverted one, the one that liked to always be trying new things and getting involved. John was quieter and more withdrawn, and preferred to sit and watch more than participate. Which Mercedes constantly reminded me was weird for a two-year-old.

"Mummy, Paul falled out the tree," John said, his voice awed and his eyes wide.

"That's what Daddy said," I agreed, looking over at Artie. He was still parked at the end of a row of chairs, his head tilted back against the wall and his expression determinedly blank. I sighed, because I recognised that face. Turning back to face Mercedes and Brittany, I gave them both a pointed look and said, "Hey Johnny, do you want some ice cream?"

When Johnny beamed excitedly, Mercedes held her arms out. "C'mon, 'Nilla boy, let's go see if we can find some ice cream for you." John happily transferred to her hip instead. "We'll be down in the caf, call when you got everything figured," she told me and then they all left, John and Brittany both practically bouncing with excitement as they talked about ice cream.

I walked over and dropped into the seat beside Artie. He blinked and glanced sideways at me but didn't move. "How is he?" I asked.

"Broken leg, but they said he'll be okay," he answered and sighed. "I should have been watching better. I should have  _known_  better. Lizzie broke her arm like that when she was little."

"So you aren't going to let him climb trees because your sister is a graceless klutz?" I asked reasonably. I reached for his hand and he laced his fingers through mine tightly. He took a shaky breath and closed his eyes.

"No, I just –" He exhaled heavily again and started over. "If I wasn't me, I could have saved him." I felt my smile flicker downward as I realised what he was trying to say. "He slipped, and he was just hanging there. He called out for me and I could tell he was scared. I tried, I really did try to get there in time, but I just  _can't_. Not the way I am. If I was normal I could have but I'm not and I let him fall. What kind of dad does that?"

"Artie," I said, trying to be gentle but firm enough that he'd actually listen to me. His only reaction was to bite his bottom lip. "Artie, look at me." He ignored me. Sighing, I put my other hand on his cheek and tilted his head 'til he was facing me, even though his eyes were still closed. I brushed my thumb against the corner of his eye until he grudgingly opened them. "Artie, you are an amazing dad."

"I let him fall," he said miserably. "I watched him get hurt and couldn't do anything to stop it."

"He's a little boy," I said with a shrug. "Little boys get hurt all the time. Even if you'd have stopped it this time, it would just happen somewhere else. You know, you were a little boy once, I think. Weren't you?"

Artie smiled indulgently. "Not sure, the details are hazy," he said. "I might have been before the mothership came to get me."

Even though I knew he was just humouring me, I laughed. "How many times did you fall out of trees or other things? I think little boys are programmed to do as many things to get hurt as they possibly can."

"I never fell out of trees, I was very graceful," Artie said and I laughed again.

"Not the way your dad tells it," I said and his smile was a little more real. "It's perfectly normal for little kids to get hurt. And I can almost promise that by the time he leaves this hospital he'll think having a cast is the coolest thing ever. He's just like you, he finds the good in everything."

"What if he'd gotten hurt worse though?" Artie asked and the last of his smile faded away. "What if he's too much like me?"

"You mean what if he'd broken his back too?" I clarified curiously and the tightness in his lips answered my question. "You're getting paranoid in your old age," I joked and Artie rolled his eyes, determined not to show his amusement at the jibe. "Artie, you know as well as anyone that these things can't be predicted. And short of locking him away in a safe little bubble there's no way to prevent them either."

I squeezed his hand and felt him return the pressure reflexively. Taking a breath, I continued, "I don't want to think that one of our kids could have to go through what you've been through either. But I do believe that if they did they'd be lucky to have you there for them. Isn't that what you always wanted when it happened to you, someone who could understand you?"

Artie closed his eyes again and we were both quiet for a while. He had his lip locked between his teeth again but he traced his thumb across the back of my hand in a steady rhythm. He was just thinking. Finally his free hand came up to run beneath his eyes and he opened them. "I envy how you make the worst things sound positive," he informed me flatly and I smiled.

"I learned from the best," I responded and he smiled into my kiss. "You okay?"

"Not yet," he said honestly, "but I will be." We didn't get much of a chance to elaborate on that because at that moment a nurse came in, pushing Paul in a little wheelchair. Artie blanched but when Paul smiled at him he managed to return it.

"Hey sweetie, how are you feeling?" I asked, moving forward and kneeling down beside him.

"Sleepy," Paul answered with a bit of a slur. I guessed it was from the painkillers. "But look, my leg's red now." I smiled as I kissed his cheek, giving the cast on his leg a cursory glance before standing up to face the nurse. She explained everything we needed to know about Paul's injury and how to handle it, and once that was through I signed his discharge papers.

Turning back to Artie, he was talking to Paul with a concerned smile on his face. "C'mon, boys, let's get home before Paul falls asleep," I said, putting a hand on his head. Paul looked up at me, pouting in a way so much like his dad's it melted my heart a little. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Artie was looking a little pleased with himself, and I figured it was because he knew what I was thinking.

"I'm not tired," Paul said stubbornly. I decided not to point out he'd just said he was five minutes ago. Artie was trying not to laugh.

"It's okay, Sport, we'll go home and you can beat me at video games again," he said and Paul eagerly agreed. We went down to the hospital cafeteria, me pushing Paul's chair since I didn't think he was conscious enough to teach him how to do it himself yet or to master a pair of crutches. Mercedes and Brittany were still sitting with John at a table, and they'd done a surprisingly good job of wiping all the chocolate off his face. Once everything had been sorted out, and Mercedes and Brittany had both promised to come by and sign Paul's cast later (since for once I didn't have a permanent marker on me), we were ready to go home.

The next day when we were sitting at breakfast, Paul looked over at Artie and said, "Daddy, do you still have your guitar?"

Artie looked up from his coffee in surprise. "Yeah. Why?"

Paul's eyes had lit up and he smiled. "Teach me," he pleaded hopefully. "I wanna play like a super rock star like you." Artie glanced across the table at me and I nodded, hiding my smile behind my own coffee cup. "Please," Paul pressed, his already wide blue eyes going larger in a very obvious puppy dog expression. It was really hard for me not to laugh. It was about time someone gave Artie a taste of his own medicine.

"Okay, Sport, after breakfast," Artie said and didn't even bother to try to hide his grin. "Finish your cereal first though." After breakfast was over, Artie pulled his guitar out of the closet and set about trying to teach Paul to play. It was funny to watch, since the full size guitar was way too big for five-year-old arms, but the way Paul's face lit up the first time he strummed a note was heart-warming. Almost as touching as the look Artie's eyes got when Paul declared that playing music was even cooler than baseball.

That was the next time Artie was broken, and I realised that our breaks were gradually becoming smaller and smaller while the number of people who could fix them was getting continually bigger.


	23. Epilogues

The next time Tina (and I) broke, it was from taking a look backwards.

It was the end of spring, fifteen years after our sophomore year and fifteen years from the time we had started up the Glee club. After our plans for a Glee ten year reunion fell through, we'd set about planning for a fifteen year instead and this time we'd actually managed it. Those who'd left the state were flying in for the weekend, and we were all meeting up at Mr. Schuester's house for dinner and to catch up.

I was glad I wasn't the only one who was nervous as I watched Tina fidgeting through the closet, trying to decide what to wear. There wasn't really any reason to freak out, since they were all our friends and we'd seen most of them several times over the years. Puck had been over just last week, and we generally saw Brittany and Mercedes (and their respective men) at least once a month. That didn't stop either of us from being nervous anyway. It was the first time all thirteen of us (Mr. S included) would be together since the end of that '09-'10 school year where it had all started.

While Tina was getting dressed, I went around helping the kids get ready to go. They would be spending the night at my parents' house, since we all figured it would not be an early night for us. I had to repack John's backpack for him, since he'd forgone packing any clothes to fit more toys into his bag. Typical four-year-old.

After that I went down to Paul's room. There were already bags sitting beside the door, but I wasn't surprised; at seven years old he was pretty good at making sure he did what he was asked. He was sitting on the bed, two-year-old Lucy sitting across from him and hugging her favourite bear, and he was awkwardly strumming on the guitar we'd gotten him from Christmas.

"You guys ready?" I asked and Paul looked up.

"Yep, I packed Lucy's bag too," he answered, pointing at the smaller bag next to his. Classic Paul, he always liked to be the responsible, helpful older brother. He set down the guitar to help Lucy, who was trying to climb down off the bed. "Can I take my guitar?"

"Yeah, Grandpa said it was okay," I said, pulling Lucy up into my lap when she held out her arms expectantly. Paul beamed and fastened his guitar into its case. He'd learned his first full song on the guitar and he'd been proudly playing it for everyone who'd listen.

"C'mon Princess, let's see if Mommy's ready to leave yet," I said after glancing at my watch. Lucy settled herself more comfortably on my lap and I rolled us out of the room and back down the hall to mine and Tina's bedroom. She was standing facing the closet, slipping her shoes on. Grinning, I let out a low wolf-whistle.

"That's mature," Tina deadpanned without bothering to glance back at me, but I could tell she was smiling.

"Really though, you look great," I said and she turned around, raising an eyebrow. I took in the dress, with its black and blue sheen, and smiled wider. "You know what that dress reminds me of?" When she shook her head, I continued, "It's the exact same colour as the one you wore to our first dance. That Valentines' disaster."

Tina glanced down at the skirt and laughed. "How do you remember things like that?"

I shrugged. "It was an image I wasn't in a hurry to erase from my mind," I answered and she laughed. "What do you think, Lucy, does Mum look good?"

"Pretty," Lucy chimed in eagerly, clapping her hands, and Tina laughed.

"Thanks, sweetie," she said. Then to me she said, "Is everyone ready?" I nodded and we set about getting everyone loaded into the van. While Tina buckled the smaller kids into their car seats, Paul helped me carry the bags to the back. Finally we were all settled and we started the drive to Lima.

Lucy fell asleep pretty quickly, she always did when in the car, while John was content to simply stare out the window. Paul entertained himself by singing along with the radio, giving Tina a puppy look until she started to sing along with him. For a seven-year-old, he had a good voice. Sort of pure and clear, like Tina's, but she was sure once his voice dropped he'd sound like me. I didn't care either way, I just liked that we could share our love of music.

We didn't stay long at my parents' house when we got there. We were already running late, so we just stayed long enough to be sure the kids were settled in, and then promised we'd be back later. We'd planned on just going home after the party and my parents bringing the kids out the next day, but Mum had been pretty adamant about us not driving home exhausted in the middle of the night so we relented and agreed to stay at the house for the night.

Finding Mr. Schue's house was easy, since it was in the same area of town near the diner Tina and I used to go to all the time in high school. There were already several cars lining the edge of the road, and I recognised Puck's truck and Mercedes' car. The porch had stairs, so Tina went up to knock and when Mr. Schue answered he grabbed Puck out of the group and then both helped carry my chair into the house. "Just like old times, huh Abrams?" Puck joked and I grinned, remembering the dozens of times he'd had to haul me in and out of the auditorium for practice before the ramps were built.

The party itself was some of the most fun I'd had in a long time. We got to catch up with people we hadn't seen in years. It was the twelve of us again, with Mr. Schuester watching over us like always, the tightest group of friends I'd ever known, but with the additions of a couple new faces of husbands and wives and boyfriends. There was a lot of picture passing, as everyone who had them showed off pictures of their kids. Kurt had teased me when I'd told him about my kids, asking me if the next one would be named Ringo or George. Tina just told him to quit being a brat or she'd dump her drink on his new shoes, making Matt, who was standing right behind her, snort into his glass. It was exactly like being back in high school again, only completely different.

It was after dinner that it really happened. Mr. Schue (he tried to get us to call him Will since he wasn't our teacher anymore but none of us really got the hang of that) announced that he'd put something together for us. We all crowded together in the living room, and he plugged his laptop into the television. Everyone was exchanging curious glances, wondering what he was up to. And then a team picture glowed on the screen, with "Don't Stop Believin'" playing through the speakers, and silence fell.

It was a slideshow, set to songs we'd sung in Glee that year we'd all been on it. Dozens of pictures, spanning all the way from our very start to us holding our second place trophy at Regionals. Some of them were posed shots, but a lot of them seemed to be candid shots or ones that people had taken while goofing off. We teased Mercedes about her curls, and jokingly lamented the absence of Puck's Mohawk, which he'd finally given up a few years back. There were a lot of pictures of Finn looking confused and even when Rachel wasn't posing she had that perfectly practised paparazzi smile on. When a picture of Santana actually smiling during a rehearsal had popped up I couldn't stop myself from exclaiming, "You really did like us!" Everyone had laughed, including Santana.

To the backdrop of " _Proud Mary_ " a picture of Tina and I together had taken over the screen, both of us smiling as she leaned over my shoulders from behind with her arms around me. A lot of the girls (and Kurt and his boyfriend) awwhed, and Finn leaned over to bump my fist. I laughed and glanced sideways at Tina. She was beaming but her eyes were misty and I knew exactly what she was thinking. We'd come a long way since that picture, taken just before Regionals, right before we'd started dating (the second time).

By the time " _My Life Would Suck Without You_ " ended the show, all of the girls' eyes were looking extra bright and all the guys were blinking and claiming allergies and other such things as we rubbed at our eyes. The entire team spent another three hours, reminiscing about the old days and promising to make plans together again soon, before people started filtering off. It was almost two in the morning when Mike and Mr. Schue lifted my chair down onto the pavement in front of the house so Tina and I could go back to my parents.

The house was silent when we got there, not surprising considering the hour. On our way in we peeked into the living room and saw all three kids in sleeping bags on the floor, underneath a network of draped sheets on the couches that I knew were supposed to be tents and forts. My dad was snoring on one of the couches, and Tina and I both had to bite our tongues to stop from laughing.

We went down to the bedroom at the end of the hall, my old bedroom. My parents had cleaned it out and rearranged it after I'd moved out, using it as a guest bedroom. This was usually where Tina and I ended up sleeping when we stayed too late at family parties. (Like I'd said, Mum was firmly against driving back to Columbus after dark.)

Neither of us had brought a change of clothes, since we hadn't expected to stay the night, but in the little box in the back of the closet Tina found a pair of my old pyjamas that hadn't fit me since junior high, and a slightly ratty band tee-shirt. She changed into them (they looked  _much_  nicer on her than they ever had me) and I stripped down to my boxers and tee-shirt, and we climbed into the bed.

"That was nice," Tina said as we settled onto the mattress, making ourselves comfortable. "Seeing everyone again, I mean. Catching up with them and finding out how everyone's doing. We've got to be better about calling them occasionally."

"Yeah, probably," I agreed. "I'm sure they've forgiven us, we've been pretty busy." I blushed a little bit when I remembered the response Kurt had given me after I'd made that excuse, something along the lines of 'well obviously since the pair of you have more children than anyone else here.' Tina was clearly thinking the same thing because she laughed into my shoulder. "It's sort of weird that Mr. Schue's kid is only two years older than Paul though, don't you think?"

"Even weirder that Puck and Quinn's little girl will be in high school next year," Tina pointed out. I had to admit she had a point there. "Gets you thinking though, doesn't it? Seeing everyone and realising how far we've come since then. Fifteen years. And we've been married almost ten of those."

"And we've known each other for almost twenty," I added and she hummed in agreement.

"You were always so smooth," Tina said and while she sounded genuine I knew her well enough to know a jibe was coming. "Find a girl crying in the hall and offer her a peanut-butter sandwich. Very suave. Very Humphrey Bogart."

"I am pretty sure I offered you cookies before that," I said. "You're a girl, chocolate makes everything better, right?" Tina reluctantly agreed with me. Grinning I added, "Bet if it had been a cupcake instead of a cookie I could have gotten you to kiss me that first day."

Tina snorted and lifted her head to meet my eyes, raising a sceptical eyebrow. "Ew, I might have gotten cooties," she said and she sounded so much like Paul had when I'd asked him if he liked the girl in his class that I bit my lip to keep my laughter quiet. She smiled and settled her head down on my chest again. "After reliving all that tonight though, it's sort of ironic being back in this room again."

"We did spend a lot of time here," I conceded, looking around the room even though I'd taken my glasses off and couldn't make out anything in the dark. It looked so different now that it didn't matter anyway. I visualised it the way it used to look, the way it had been when we'd shared memories in here.

There was the dark red curtains, covering the window she'd snuck in through so many times. The corner where my stereo used to sit, where we'd listen to music for hours on end. The place where my desk had stood, which used to hold the television we'd watched what must have been a million movies on. The bed used to stand against the opposite wall, where we'd stayed up all night talking things out after fights, especially that one after her stutter confession. The spot where she'd consoled me after I'd been tied to the flagpole that time in junior high, and where I'd comforted her after her fight with her dad.

"Do you miss it?" I asked curiously and Tina raised her head to see my face again. "High school, the way things were then. Do you ever wish you could go back?"

"Sometimes," she admitted. "There are times I wish I could go back to when our biggest concerns were whether or not we'd remembered to pack an extra change of clothes in case we got slushied. Those times when it had been just you and me and the music. Back before I was an orphan." Her voice broke and I tightened my arm around her. We hadn't talked about her parents in over two years, since Lucy was born and Tina told me how much her dad used to say he wanted a granddaughter someday.

"Wish we done things different?" I asked.

Tina was quiet for a minute and then shook her head. "Not really," she admitted. I looked at her in surprise. "Things were rough for us, always had been. Sometimes I wonder whether I could have done something differently, maybe talked to my parents about my dreams earlier or conform just a little longer, so that I wouldn't have shredded my family apart. I really wish our kids could know both their grandparents. But I wouldn't be able to forgive myself if I changed something that took apart what we have now."

I put a hand on the side of her face and felt the tears that were running across her cheek, but they weren't the sort of tears that made my heart break. They were happy tears, the ones she'd shed when I'd proposed and when we married and each time we found out we were adding a new member to our family and each time the new baby arrived. I'd seen her cry so many tears in our lives, but at some point there had been a shift and the ratio of sad to happy tears had completely reversed.

"I love you," I said, putting every bit of sincerity in my heart into it, and I felt a warm tear on my cheek too.

"Forever and ever," she added.

"No matter what," I finished and she kissed me, that same soft, grateful, powerful kiss we'd shared so many times. We curled up together, and I felt a whole new level of contentment sweep through me.

I was just about to drift off when I heard footsteps and a sniffling. The door opened up and I could just make out the tiny silhouette. "Luce?" I asked quietly.

"Daddy," she sobbed back. Tina and I both sat up instantly. "Monster noises," she said and I could hear the fear in her voice.

My ears could just catch the sounds coming from the living room and I smiled. "That's just Grandpa snoring," I said but she shuddered anyway. "Alright, Princess, come here." Lucy hurried around to the edge of the bed while Tina crawled over to close the bedroom door again. I hauled Lucy up onto the mattress and she immediately laid down, most of her body on top of my torso as she nuzzled her tear-streaked face into my chest. I wrapped an arm across her body to keep her from rolling off, and Tina curled against my side again, adding her arm to mine.

And as we laid there together, Tina and I both consoling our baby girl, I realised that she was completely right. Things had been rough for us from the get-go, and we'd been through (and occasionally put ourselves through) a lot of things. We had been broken in ways and more times than it seemed like were normal for people, but really, we weren't normal. Never had been. But despite the scars life had left on us, I wouldn't trade what we had now for anything.

That wasn't the last time either of us would be broken, far from it, but each time it happened we simply looked at what we'd gained from it and suddenly breaks didn't really feel like breaks anymore.


End file.
